"I can never make out why you pretend to hate Dennison, he wouldn't mind being friends with you; besides, it makes things very disagreeable for me."
"I don't pretend anything," I said.
"At any rate it's very stupid of you; you are both Mohocks, and ought to be friends."
I thought he had come on a peace mission, so, to prevent waste of time, I said what I thought of Dennison.
"You make a mistake about him altogether," he said. "Got any port?"
"You'll get as fat as Collier if you aren't careful, and it wouldn't suit you a bit," I replied, and stayed in my chair.
"Port doesn't make people fat," but he spoke doubtfully.
"You know best, but I should advise you to be careful. What's the rag?"
He shot his cuffs down and stroked his upper lip, as he always did when he was going to say anything which he thought interesting.
"Dennison is getting it up, which means that it will be jolly well done. He has found out that Thornton knows nothing, so he is teaching him a lot. To begin with, he has invented a society called 'The Hedonists,' which is supposed to get pleasure out of anything extraordinary, and he has filled up Thornton with the idea that he is the very man to be President if we can get him elected."