“To me it’s quite indifferent,” said Mrs. Viveash faintly, as though wholly preoccupied with expiring.
“Or there’s my place,” Gumbril said abruptly, as though shaking himself awake out of some dream.
“But you live still farther, don’t you?” said Coleman. “With venerable parents, and so forth. One foot in the grave and all that. Shall we mingle hornpipes with funerals?” He began to hum Chopin’s ‘Funeral March’ at three times its proper speed, and seizing the young stranger in his arms, two-stepped two or three turns on the pavement, then released his hold and let him go reeling against the area railings.
“No, I don’t mean the family mansion,” said Gumbril. “I mean my own rooms. They’re quite near. In Great Russell Street.”
“I never knew you had any rooms, Theodore,” said Mrs. Viveash.
“Nobody did.” Why should they know now? Because the wind seemed almost a country wind? “There’s drink there,” he said.
“Splendid!” cried the young man. They were all splendid people.
“There’s some gin,” said Gumbril.
“Capital aphrodisiac!” Coleman commented.
“Some light white wine.”