’Why, hulloa, don’t I remember her coming out!—­and do you mean to tell me,’ Mr. Beaves Urmsing brutally addressed the colonel, ’that you were at Eton when . . . why, what age do you give the poor woman, then!’ He bellowed, ‘Eh?’ as it were a bull crowing.

The colonel retreated to one of his defensive corners.  ’I am not aware that I meant to tell you anything.’

Mr. Beaves Urmsing turned square-breasted on Fenellan:  ’Fellow’s a born donkey!’

‘And the mother lived?’ said Fenellan.

Mr. Beaves Urmsing puffed with wrath at the fellow.

Five minutes later, in the midst of the group surrounding and felicitating Victor, he had sight of Fenellan conversing with fair ones, and it struck a light in him; he went three steps backward, with shouts.  ’Dam funny fellow! eh? who is he?  I must have that man at my table.  Worth fifty Colonel Jackasses!  And I ’ve got a son in the Guards:  and as much laugh in him, he ’s got, as a bladder.  But we’ll make a party, eh, Radnor? with that friend o’ yours.  Dam funny fellow! and precious little of it going on now among the young lot.  They’re for seeing ghosts and gaping their jaws; all for the quavers instead of the capers.’

He sounded and thrummed his roguish fling-off for the capers.  A second glimpse of Fenellan agitated the anecdote, as he called it, seizing Victor’s arm, to have him out of earshot of the ladies.  Delivery, not without its throes, was accomplished, but imperfectly, owing to sympathetic convulsions, under which Mr. Beaves Urmsing’s countenance was crinkled of many colours, as we see the Spring rhubarb-leaf.  Unable to repeat the brevity of Fenellan’s rejoinder, he expatiated on it to convey it, swearing that it was the kind of thing done in the old days, when men were witty dogs:—­’pat! and pat back! as in the pantomime.’

‘Repartee !’ said Victor.  ’He has it.  You shall know him.  You’re the man for him.’

’He for me, that he is!—­“Hope the mother’s doing well?  My card":—­eh?  Grave as an owl!  Look, there goes the donkey, lady to right and left, all ears for him—­ha! ha!  I must have another turn with your friend.  “Mother lived, did she?” Dam funny fellow, all of the olden time!  And a dinner, bachelor dinner, six of us, at my place, next week, say Wednesday, half-past six, for a long evening—­flowing bowl—­eh, shall it be?’

Nesta came looking to find her Captain Dartrey.

Mr. Beaves Urmsing grew courtly of the olden time.  He spied Colonel Corfe anew, and ‘Donkey!’ rose to split the roar at his mouth, and full of his anecdote, he pursued some congenial acquaintances, crying to his host:  ’Wednesday, mind! eh? by George, your friend’s gizzarded me for the day!’