"It's the one called 'Virginibus Puerisk,'" said Mr. Henry Harper.
Miss Carinthia Small felt that a pin might have been heard to fall in Upper Brook Street, Berkeley Square. Mr. Cuthbert Rampant shared her emotion. Yet the area of the fatal silence did not extend beyond Mr. Marmaduke Buzzard, who had already reopened fire a short distance away, and was again doing immense execution.
Miss Carinthia Small and Mr. Cuthbert Rampant risked no further discussion of Stevisson with this strange young Visigoth from the back of beyond. Neither of them could have believed it to be possible. When he had been first ushered into the room by the benign Herbert, and had modestly sat down, he had looked so clean and neat, and anxious to efface himself that he might have been a product of some self-respecting modern university who was on a reconnaissance from a garden suburb. But how could that have been their thought! This was a cruel trick that somebody had played upon Herbert. There was malice in it, too. Dear Herbert, England's only critic, the British Sainte Beuve, had had his leg pulled in a really wicked manner! He had always prided himself upon being democratic and inclusive, but there was a limit to everything.
Happily the Sailor did not stay much longer. Many stylists were going already. It had been an interesting experience for the young man. If he had gained nothing beyond a cup of lukewarm tea and a cucumber sandwich, he certainly felt very glad that he had had the courage to face it.
"Good-by, ma'am," he said, squeezing a delicate white glove in a broad and powerful grip. "I'm very proud to have met you. What else ought I to read of Stevisson?"
Miss Carintha Small felt an inclination to laugh. But yet there was something that saved him. What it was she didn't know. She only knew it was something that Winchester and New College in the person of Mr. Cuthbert Rampant did not possess.
"Good-by." There was really very little of the stylist in her voice, although she was not aware of it, and would have been quite mortified had such been the case. "And you must read 'Treasure Island.' It is exactly your style, although 'Dick Smith' is very much deeper and truer and to my mind altogether more sincere."
Miss Carinthia Small had not meant to say a word of this. She had not meant to say anything. She had intended to efface this young man altogether.
The Sailor threaded his way through a perfect maze of stylists with almost a sense of rapture. It had been a delightful adventure to converse on equal terms with a real Hyde Park Lady: a brilliant creature who had neither chaffed him nor hit him in the back, nor addressed him as "Greased Lightning," nor had rebuked him with "Damn you." He walked out on air.
As the author of "The Adventures of Dick Smith" was retrieving his hat from the hotel cloak room, he was suddenly brought to earth. Two really imperial stylists were being assisted into elaborate fur coats by two stylists among footman.