"My wife," continued Dr. Fell, after he had given a Gargantuan order — "my wife would never have forgiven me if I'd missed you. She's in a stew as it is, what with plaster falling off in the best bedroom, and the new revolving sprinkler for the lawn, which wouldn't work until the rector came to call, and then it doused him like a shower-bath. Heh-heh. Have a drink. I don't know what kind of wine it is, and I never ask; it's wine, and that's enough for me."
"Your health, sir."
"Thank'e, my boy. Permit me," said Dr. Fell, apparently with some vague recollections of his stay in America, "to jump the gutter. Nunc bibendum est. Heh.- So you're Bob Melson's senior wrangler, eh? English history, I think he said. You're thinking of a Ph.D., and then teaching?"
Rampole suddenly felt very young and very foolish, despite the doctor's amiable eye. He mumbled something noncommittal.
"That's fine," said the other. "Bob praised you, but he said, `Too imaginative by half"; that's what he said. Bah! give 'em the glory, I say; give 'em the glory. Now, when I lectured at your Haverford, they may not have learned much about English history, but they cheered, my boy, they cheered when I described battles. I remember," continued the doctor, his vast face glowing as with a joyous sunset, and puffing beneath it "I remember teaching 'em the Drinking Song of Godfrey of Bouillon's men on the First Crusade in 1187, leading the chorus myself. Then they all got to singing and stamping on the floor, as it were; and a maniacal professor of mathematics came stamping up with his hands entangled in his hair — as it were-and said (admirably restrained chap) would we kindly stop shaking the blackboards off the wall in the room below? `It is unseemly,' says he; 'burpf, burpf, ahem, very unseemly.' `Not at all,' says I. `It is the "Laus Vini Exercitus Crucis," `It is, like hell,' says he. `Do you think I don't know "We Won't Be Home until Morning" when I hear it?' And then I had to explain the classic derivation.
“Hallo, Payne!" the doctor boomed, breaking off to flourish his napkin at the aisle.
Turning, Rampole saw the exceedingly glum and rigid man with the pipe, whom he had noticed before in the corridor of the train. The cap was off now, to show a close-shaven skull of wiry white hair, a long brown face, and a general air of doddering down the aisle, looking for a place to fall. He grumbled something, not very civilly, and paused by the table.
"Mr. Payne, Mr. Rampole," said Dr. Fell. Payne's eyes turned on the American with a startling flash of their whites; they seemed suspicious. "Mr. Payne is Chatterham's legal adviser," the doctor explained. "I say, Payne, where are your charges? I wanted young Starberth to have a glass of wine with us."
A thin hand fluttered to Payne's brown chin, and stroked it. His voice was dry, with a premonitory rasp and difficulty, as though he were winding himself up.
"Didn't arrive," replied the lawyer, shortly.