The reply was deferred until they had reached the pavement, when Mr. Fenellan said:  ‘I’ll tell you,’ and looked a dubious preface, to his friend’s thinking.

But it was merely the mental inquiry following a glance at mud-spots on the coat.

‘We’ll lunch; lunch with me, I must eat, tell me then,’ said Mr. Radnor, adding within himself:  ‘Emptiness! want of food!’ to account for recent ejaculations and qualms.  He had not eaten for a good four hours.

Fenellan’s tone signified to his feverish sensibility of the moment, that the matter was personal; and the intimation of a touch on domestic affairs caused sinkings in his vacuity, much as though his heart were having a fall.

He mentioned the slip on the bridge, to explain his:  need to visit a haberdasher’s shop, and pointed at the waistcoat.

Mr. Fenellan was compassionate over the ‘Poor virgin of the smoky city!’

’They have their ready-made at these shops—­last year’s:  perhaps, never mind, do for the day,’ said Mr. Radnor, impatient for eating, now that he had spoken of it.  ’A basin of turtle; I can’t wait.  A brush of the coat; mud must be dry by this time.  Clear turtle, I think, with a bottle of the Old Veuve.  Not bad news to tell?  You like that Old Veuve?’

‘Too well to tell bad news of her,’ said Mr. Fenellan in a manner to reassure his friend, as he intended.  ’You wouldn’t credit it for the Spring of the year, without the spotless waistcoat?’

‘Something of that, I suppose.’  And so saying, Mr. Radnor entered the shop of his quest, to be complimented by the shopkeeper, while the attendants climbed the ladder to upper stages for white-waistcoat boxes, on his being; the first bird of the season; which it pleased him to hear; for the smallest of our gratifications in life could give a happy tone to this brightly-constituted gentleman.

CHAPTER III

OLD VEUVE

They were known at the house of the turtle and the attractive Old Veuve:  a champagne of a sobered sweetness, of a great year, a great age, counting up to the extremer maturity attained by wines of stilly depths; and their worthy comrade, despite the wanton sparkles, for the promoting of the state of reverential wonderment in rapture, which an ancient wine will lead to, well you wot.  The silly girly sugary crudity his given way to womanly suavity, matronly composure, with yet the sparkles; they ascend; but hue and flavour tell of a soul that has come to a lodgement there.  It conducts the youthful man to temples of dusky thought:  philosophers partaking of it are drawn by the arms of garlanded nymphs about their necks into the fathomless of inquiries.  It presents us with a sphere, for the pursuit of the thing we covet most.  It bubbles over mellowness; it has, in the marriage with Time, extracted a spice of individuality from the saccharine:  by miracle, one would say,