Joseph Jocelyn De Vere Vane-Anstruther, who had a cigarette between his lips, and was lying full length upon a chintz that was charmingly devised in blue and yellow, inquired whether I had mentioned to Fitz the subject of a meeting with the outraged Brasset.
"If the weather don't pick up," said this Corinthian, "we shall go up to town to-morrow, and my pal in Jermyn Street will put Brasset through his facings. With a bit of practice Brasset ought to be able to give Fitz his gruel."
"I fail to see," said I, "why the unfortunate husband should be brought to book for the sins of the wife."
"If you take to yourself a wife," said my relation by marriage, with a didacticism of which he is seldom guilty, "it is for better or for worse; and if your missus overrides the best 'ound in the pack and then 'its the Master over the head with her crop because he tells her what he thinks of her, you are looking both ways for trouble."
"It is a hard doctrine," said I.
"If a chap is such a fool as to marry, he must stand to the consequences."
"He must!"
Such a prompt corroboration of the young fellow's reasoning can only be described as sinister. A flash of the china-blue eyes came from the vicinity of the hearthrug.
"How did Mrs. Fitz bear herself at the dinner table?" inquired the sharer of my joys. "Did she eat with her knife and drink out of the finger bowls?"
"No, mon enfant, I am compelled to say that she did not."