It was Angell Herald who had broken the silence, and snapped the thread. All eyes turned in his direction. Bindle, who was just in the act of lighting his pipe, paused and gazed curiously at Angell Herald over the flame of the match, then he turned to me and I saw that he understood.
It was Windover, however, who expressed the opinion of the Club upon Angell Herald's comment, when he muttered loud enough for all to hear:
"Oh! for the jawbone of an ass!"
CHAPTER IX
MRS. BILTOX-JONES'S EXPERIMENT
I do not think any of us really liked Angell Herald, his self-satisfied philistinism constituting a serious barrier to close personal relations. I have already commented upon certain of his characteristics that jarred upon us all; but it seemed no one's business to indicate, delicately or otherwise, that he was not so welcome as we might have wished.
Dick Little had introduced him on the strength of a story he had heard him tell at some masonic dinner, I think it was, and he had decided that Angell Herald would be an acquisition to the Night Club. Sallie thought otherwise, and had summed him up as "a worm in a top hat": he always wore a top hat. It was the only occasion on which I had known Sallie break out into epigram. Both she and Bindle disliked Angell Herald almost to the point of intolerance. As a matter of fact he is not a bad fellow, if his foibles are not too much emphasized.
His principal asset, however, is that he has a fund of interesting experiences which, strangely enough, he rates far lower than the stories he at first would insist on telling.
He assured us that Mrs. Biltox-Jones was no imaginary person and we, knowing his limitations, believed him, and that her social experiment was at the time the talk of Fleet Street.
I