He reached Audley Egerton's door just as that gentleman was getting out of his carriage; and the two friends entered the house together.
"Does the nation take a nap to-night?" asked L'Estrange. "Poor old lady! She hears so much of her affairs, that she may well boast of her constitution: it must be of iron."
"The House is still sitting," answered Audley, seriously, and with small heed of his friend's witticism. "But it is not a Government motion, and the division will be late, so I came home; and if I had not found you here, I should have gone into the Park to look for you."
"Yes; one always knows where to find me at this hour, nine o'clock P.M., cigar, Hyde Park. There is not a man in England so regular in his habits."
Here the friends reached a drawing-room in which the member of parliament seldom sat, for his private apartments were all on the ground-floor.
"But it is the strangest whim of yours, Harley," said he.
"What?"
To affect detestation of ground-floors."
"Affect! O sophisticated man, of the earth, earthy! Affect!—nothing less natural to the human soul than a ground-floor. We are quite far enough from Heaven, mount as many stairs as we will, without grovelling by preference."
"According to that symbolical view of the case," said Audley, "you should lodge in an attic."