“Ah, my child, to whom do you say it?” Eustache Poupin exclaimed, folding his arms, despairingly.
“Whom do you mean by ‘we’?” said Muniment.
“All the lot of us. There are plenty of them ready.”
“Ready for what? There is nothing to be done here.”
Hyacinth stared. “Then why the deuce do you come?”
“I dare say I shan’t come much more. This is a place you have always overestimated.”
“I wonder if I have overestimated you,” Hyacinth murmured, gazing at his friend.
“Don’t say that—he’s going to introduce us to Hoffendahl!” Schinkel exclaimed, putting away his pipe in a receptacle almost as large as a fiddle-case.
“Should you like to see the genuine article, Robinson?” Muniment asked, with the same unusual absence of jocosity in his tone.
“The genuine article?” Hyacinth looked from one of his companions to the other.