'Will you allow me?' he said, rising from his chair. 'I beg your pardon, but, if you will allow me, I will arrange the fire.'
Alice let him have the poker, and when he had knocked in the coal-crust and put on some fresh fuel, he said:
'If it weren't for me I don't know what would become of this fire. I believe the old porter goes to sleep and forgets all about it. Now and again he wakes up and makes a deal of fuss with a shovel and a broom.'
'I really can't say, we only came up from Galway to-day.'
'Then you don't know the famous Shelbourne Hotel! All the events of life are accomplished here. People live here, and die here, and flirt here, and, I was going to say, marry here—but hitherto the Shelbourne marriages have resulted in break-offs—and we quarrel here; the friends of to-day are enemies to-morrow, and then they sit at different ends of the room. Life in the Shelbourne is a thing in itself, and a thing to be studied.'
Alice laughed again, and again she continued her conversation.
'I really know nothing of the Shelbourne. I was only here once before, and then only for a few days last summer, when I came home from school.'
'And now you are here for the Drawing-Room?'
'Yes; but how did you guess that?'
'The natural course of events: a young lady leaves school, she spends four or five months at home, and then she is taken to the Lord-Lieutenant's Drawing-Room.'