The lad in buttons took his order for whiskies and soda, after which Gordon glared at the portrait of the club's distinguished first president.
"Rotten piece of work, I call it. Chap who did it used a lot of beastly bitumen too, and it's cracking all over. Awful rubbishy stuff."
"I suppose so," I assented, on faith.
"Ben Franklin was a shrewd old fellow," he continued, with one of his habitual lightning changes. "Tells us that a man without a woman is like half a pair of scissors. I'm to be the complete thing, now. Stunning girl, Miss Van Rossum, isn't she? She talks of having a studio built at Southampton, for effect, I presume. How the deuce could a fellow expect to paint with a parcel of chattering women around him?"
"Oh! I daresay you might get used to it," I told him, soothingly.
"I won't! She is going to read books about painting. Told me she wanted to be able to talk intelligently about it, and I advised against it. People don't talk intelligently about painting, they only pretend to. They must insist on airing their views about futurists, or the influence of Botticelli or such truck. They make me yawn, and I try to turn the conversation, but it's a tough job. Why the deuce are you looking at me like that?"
He snapped the question out so quickly that I was somewhat taken aback, and he began again, without waiting for an answer.
"Oh! It's no use trying to make a practical man of the world out of a sentimental writer of impossible love stories. You're staring at me because I don't answer to your preconceived ideas of a fellow contemplating the joys of matrimony. Why the deuce should I?"
"I don't know, old fellow," I confessed. "I acknowledge that I have always regarded wedded life in the abstract, but I must say that my——"
"I know. Your ideal is a freckled youth with a left shoulder upholding the head of a pug-nosed girl, who weeps tears of joy in his bosom, the while he gazes up at the heavens in thankfulness. I'm all right, Dave! I've accomplished all that I was aiming at, and there are no problems left to solve. Where's that devilish boy with those drinks?"