“What’s the meaning of it?” demanded the sub-editor.
“Meaning of what?”
“This sudden interest of all you fellows in the British Peerage.”
“All of us?”
“Well, Herring was here last week, poring over that book for half an hour, with the Morning Post spread out before him. Now you’re doing the same thing.”
“Ah! Jack Herring, was he? I thought as much. Don’t talk about it, Tommy. I’ll tell you later on.”
On the following Monday, the Briefless one announced to the Club that he had received an invitation to dine at the Loveredges’ on the following Wednesday. On Tuesday, the Briefless one entered the Club with a slow and stately step. Halting opposite old Goslin the porter, who had emerged from his box with the idea of discussing the Oxford and Cambridge boat race, Somerville, removing his hat with a sweep of the arm, held it out in silence. Old Goslin, much astonished, took it mechanically, whereupon the Briefless one, shaking himself free from his Inverness cape, flung it lightly after the hat, and strolled on, not noticing that old Goslin, unaccustomed to coats lightly and elegantly thrown at him, dropping the hat, had caught it on his head, and had been, in the language of the prompt-book, “left struggling.” The Briefless one, entering the smoking-room, lifted a chair and let it fall again with a crash, and sitting down upon it, crossed his legs and rang the bell.
“Ye’re doing it verra weel,” remarked approvingly the Wee Laddie. “Ye’re just fitted for it by nature.”
“Fitted for what?” demanded the Briefless one, waking up apparently from a dream.
“For an Adelphi guest at eighteenpence the night,” assured him the Wee Laddie. “Ye’re just splendid at it.”