But Mr. Raikes had the disadvantage of having come to the table empty in stomach—­thirsty exceedingly; and, I repeat, that as, without experience, you are the victim of divinely given Eve, so, with no foundation to receive it upon, are you the victim of good sound Ale.  He very soon lost his head.  He would otherwise have seen that he must produce a wonderfully-telling speech if he was to keep the position he had taken, and had better not attempt one.  The three young cricketers were hostile from the beginning.  All of them leant forward, calling attention loudly laughing for the fun to come.

‘Gentlemen!’ he said:  and said it twice.  The gap was wide, and he said, ‘Gentlemen!’ again.

This commencement of a speech proves that you have made the plunge, but not that you can swim.  At a repetition of ‘Gentlemen!’ expectancy resolved into cynicism.

‘Gie’n a help,’ sang out a son of the plough to a neighbour of the orator.

‘Hang it!’ murmured another, ‘we ain’t such gentlemen as that comes to.’

Mr. Raikes was politely requested to ‘tune his pipe.’

With a gloomy curiosity as to the results of Jack’s adventurous undertaking, and a touch of anger at the three whose bearing throughout had displeased him, Evan regarded his friend.  He, too, had drunk, and upon emptiness.  Bright ale had mounted to his brain.  A hero should be held as sacred as the Grand Llama:  so let no more be said than that he drank still, nor marked the replenishing of his glass.

Raikes cleared his throat for a final assault:  he had got an image, and was dashing off; but, unhappily, as if to make the start seem fair, he was guilty of his reiteration, ‘Gentlemen.’

Everybody knew that it was a real start this time, and indeed he had made an advance, and had run straight through half a sentence.  It was therefore manifestly unfair, inimical, contemptuous, overbearing, and base, for one of the three young cricketers at this period to fling back weariedly and exclaim:  ‘By the Lord; too many gentlemen here!’

Evan heard him across the table.  Lacking the key of the speaker’s previous conduct, the words might have passed.  As it was, they, to the ale-invaded head of a young hero, feeling himself the world’s equal, and condemned nevertheless to bear through life the insignia of Tailordom, not unnaturally struck with peculiar offence.  There was arrogance, too, in the young man who had interposed.  He was long in the body, and, when he was not refreshing his sight by a careless contemplation of his finger-nails, looked down on his company at table, as one may do who comes from loftier studies.  He had what is popularly known as the nose of our aristocracy:  a nose that much culture of the external graces, and affectation of suavity, are required to soften.  Thereto were joined thin lips and arched brows.  Birth it was possible he could boast, hardly brains.  He sat to the right of the fair-haired youth, who, with his