“Have we not met before?” asked he, after a pause. “If I don’t mistake, we dined together aboard of Leslie’s yacht, the Fawn.”
I shook my head. “Only knew Sir Francis Leslie by name; never saw the Fawn.”
The shot failed, but there was no recoil in his gun, and he merely bowed a half apology.
“A yacht is a mistake,” added he, after another interval. “One is obliged to take, not the men one wants, but the fellows who can bear the sea. Leslie, for instance, had such a set that I left him at Messina. Strange enough, they took us for pirates there.”
“For pirates!”
“Yes. There were three fishing-boats—what they call Bilancelle—some fifteen or sixteen miles out at sea, and when they saw us coming along with all canvass set, they hauled up their nets and ran with all speed for shore. Rather absurd, wasn’t it? but, as I told Leslie about his friends, ‘the blunder wasn’t so great after all; there was only a vowel between Raffs and Riffs.’”
The disparagement of “questionable people” is such an old device of adventurers, that I was really surprised such a master of his art as my present friend would condescend to it. It belonged altogether to an inferior practitioner; and, indeed, he quickly saw the effect it had produced upon me, as he said, “Not that I care a straw for the fellows I associate with; my theory is, a gentleman can know any one.”
Richard was himself again as he uttered this speech, lying well back in his chair, and sending a thin cloud of incense from the angle of his mouth.
“What snobs they were in Brummel’s day, for instance, always asking if this or that man was fit to be known! Why, sir, it was the very fellows they tabooed were the cream of the set; ‘it was the cards they threw out were the trumps.’”
The illustration came so pat that he smiled as he perceived by a twinkle of my eye that I appreciated it.