‘Please yourself. This gentleman is my friend, Mr. Woodseer.’
Sir Meeson Corby was a plump little beau of forty, at war with his fat and accounting his tight blue tail coat and brass buttons a victory. His tightness made his fatness elastic; he looked wound up for a dance, and could hardly hold on a leg; but the presentation of a creature in a battered hat and soiled garments, carrying a tattered knapsack half slung, lank and with disorderly locks, as the Earl of Fleetwood’s friend—the friend of the wealthiest nobleman of Great Britain!—fixed him in a perked attitude of inquiry that exhausted interrogatives. Woodseer passed him, slouching a bow. The circular stare of Sir Meeson seemed unable to contract. He directed it on Lord Fleetwood, and was then reminded that he dealt with prickles.
‘Where have you been?’ he said, blinking to refresh his eyeballs. ‘I missed you, I ran round and round the town after you.’
‘I have been to the lake.’
‘Queer fish there!’ Sir Meeson dropped a glance on the capture.
Lord Fleetwood took Woodseer’s arm. ‘Do you eat with us?’ he asked the baronet, who had stayed his eating for an hour and was famished; so they strode to the dining-room.
‘Do you wash, sir, before eating?’ Sir Meeson said to Woodseer, caressing his hands when they had seated themselves at table. ‘Appliances are to be found in this hotel.’
‘Soap?’ said Lord Fleetwood.
‘Soap—at least, in my chamber.’
‘Fetch it, please.’