Mr. Reginald Clapper was a small but energetic gentleman, much impressed, I was glad to notice, with a conviction of his own good fortune. He expressed the greatest delight at being introduced to me, shook me heartily by the hand, and hoped we should always be friends.
“Won't be my fault if we're not,” he added. “Come and see us whenever you like.” He repeated this three times. I gathered the general sentiment to be that he was acting, if anything, with excess of generosity.
Mrs. Reginald Clapper, as I was relieved to know she now was, received my salute to a subdued murmur of applause. She looked to my eyes handsomer than when I had last seen her, or maybe my taste was growing less exacting. She also trusted she might always regard me as a friend. I replied that it would be my hope to deserve the honour; whereupon she kissed me of her own accord, and embracing her mother, shed some tears, explaining the reason to be that everybody was so good to her.
Brother George, less lank than formerly, hampered by a pair of enormous white kid gloves, superintended my signing of the register, whispering to me sympathetically: “Better luck next time, old cock.”
The fat young lady—or, maybe, the lean young lady, grown stouter, I cannot say for certain—who feared I had forgotten her, a thing I assured her utterly impossible, was good enough to say that, in her opinion, I was worth all the others put together.
“And so I told her,” added the fat young lady—or the lean one grown stouter, “a dozen times if I told her once. But there!”
I murmured my obligations.
Cousin Joseph, 'whom I found no difficulty in recognising by reason of his watery eyes, appeared not so chirpy as of yore.
“You take my tip,” advised Cousin Joseph, drawing me aside, “and keep out of it.”
“You speak from experience?” I suggested.