Both these famous men are happily (and most beautifully) married—grandfathers, for all I know—and "move in the very best society" (Lorrimer always, I'm told; Antony now and then); "la haute," as it used to be called in French bohemia—meaning dukes and lords and even royalties, I suppose, and those who love them and whom they love.
That is the best society, isn't it? At all events, we are assured it used to be; but that must have been before the present scribe (a meek and somewhat innocent outsider) had been privileged to see it with his own little eye.
And when they happen to meet there (Antony and Lorrimer, I mean), I don't expect they rush very wildly into each other's arms, or talk very fluently about old times. Nor do I suppose their wives are very intimate. None of our wives are. Not even Taffy's and the Laird's.
Oh, Orestes! Oh, Pylades!
Oh, ye impecunious, unpinnacled young inseparables of eighteen, nineteen, twenty, even twenty-five, who share each other's thoughts and purses, and wear each other's clothes, and swear each other's oaths, and smoke each other's pipes, and respect each other's lights o' love, and keep each other's secrets, and tell each other's jokes, and pawn each other's watches and merrymake together on the proceeds, and sit all night by each other's bedsides in sickness, and comfort each other in sorrow and disappointment with silent, manly sympathy—"wait till you get to forty year!"
Wait even till each or either of you gets himself a little pinnacle of his own—be it ever so humble!
Nay, wait till either or each of you gets himself a wife!
History goes on repeating itself, and so do novels, and this is a platitude, and there's nothing new under the sun.
May too cecee (as the idiomatic Laird would say, in the language he adores)—may too cecee ay nee eecee nee láh!
Then there was Dodor, the handsome young dragon de la garde—a full private, if you please, with a beardless face, and damask-rosy cheeks, and a small waist, and narrow feet like a lady's, and who, strange to say, spoke English just like an Englishman.