In Pall Mall.
“Voilà!—the pilot-fish and the shark!”
The words were spoken by an individual idly smoking a cigar on the steps of that gloomy-looking pile in Pall Mall known as the Peripatetics. He was the being that, go where he would, uneducated people would set down as belonging to the division Swell; for there was ton and aristocrat in the fit of his clothes and every curve of his body. Women would have called his black moustache and beard handsome, and spoken of his piercing eyes, high white forehead, and wonderful complexion; but Podger Pratt—that is to say, Frank Pratt—said more than once he had never seen a barber’s dummy that was his equal. He said it in a very solemn way; and when it came to the ears of the gentleman in question, he denounced Podger Pratt as a disgusting little cad, and the next time they met at the club Captain Vanleigh asked Pratt what he meant by it.
“What did I mean?” said Pratt, in a serious, puzzled tone of voice. “What did I mean?—oh, just what I said. It’s a fact.”
Captain Vanleigh stood glaring at him as if trying to pierce the imperturbable crust of solemnity on the speaker’s face; but Pratt remained as solemn as a judge, and amidst an ill-suppressed tittering, the Captain stalked from the room, saying to his companion—
“The fellow’s a fool—an ass—little better than an idiot!”
As for Podger Pratt, he looked innocently round the room as if asking the meaning of the laugh, and then went on with his paper.
But that was months before the present day, when Captain Vanleigh, gracefully removing his cigar from between his white teeth, said—
“Voilà! the pilot-fish and the shark!”