It was hard that he had no Miss Georgie Lestrange to amuse him;
perhaps Miss Georgie had been considered ineligible for admission into
this intellectual coterie. Poor man!--and to think he might have been
dining in solitary comfort at his club, at a quiet little table, with
two candles, and a Sunday paper propped up by the water-bottle! But he
betrayed no impatience; he sat and looked and meditated.
However, when dinner was over and the ladies had left the room, he had
to go and take his sister's place, so that he found himself in the thick
of the babble. Mr. Quirk was no longer goring spiders' webs; he was now
attacking a solid and substantial subject--nothing less than the
condition of the British army; and a pretty poor opinion he seemed to
have of it. As it chanced, the only person who had seen service was Lord
Rockminster (at Knightsbridge), but he did not choose to open his mouth,
so that Mr. Quirk had it all his way--except when Maurice Mangan thought
it worth while to give him a cuff or a kick, just by way of reminding
him that he was mortal. Ichabod, in silence, stuck to the port wine.
Quincey Hooper, the American journalist, drew in a chair by the side of
Lord Rockminster and humbly fawned.
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