“There are two sorts of dinners, sir,” said the marshal.
“True, your grace, but——”
The marshal interrupted him with a slightly impatient movement, although still dignified.
“Do you know, sir, that whenever I have heard the word ‘but,’ and I have heard it many times in the course of eighty-eight years, it has been each time, I am sorry to say, the harbinger of some folly.”
“Your grace——”
“In the first place, at what time do we dine?”
“Your grace, the citizens dine at two, the bar at three, the nobility at four——”
“And I, sir?”
“Your grace will dine to-day at five.”
“Oh, at five!”