“And now where’s Massey and the blushing one?” Mr. Wellcome demanded; and when he had found them and shaken hands with them he almost doubled the scholastic stationer in two with the blow he gave him between the shoulder-blades. He gave a “Ha, ha, ha!” of amazing volume.
“Done it now, my boy!” he cried. “Nasty things, actions for Breach! Twopence on the bus from High Street to the Broadway now! Well, well, we all do it, even the flies on the sugar-basin! Congrats, congrats.—Now, Mrs. Deschamps! Damme, I must have a kiss from you too, if it was only for the sake of old times!—Where’s Mrs. W——? Tut-tut, you ought to know better than to ask; ask Massey, he knows—or he will one of these days!... Well, now we’re all here let’s get on with the Prayer Meeting. Phtt!”
Mr. Wellcome whistled and snapped his fingers to the waiter at the door.
For Mr. Wellcome never came empty-handed. The Belgian waiter approached with a tray, and it was now discovered that another tray chock-full of jingling glasses stood outside. Mr. Wellcome travelled for Perclay Barkins & Co., and knew butlers and wine-tasters and cellarmen and head-waiters, and was to be relied on for valuable information about vintages and bottling and tobacco-crops.—“Stand there, Whiskerino, by Miss Addams,” he commanded the waiter; and from the tray he began to toss into Miss Addams’s lap a number of articles.
“Thought you might find a use for these,” he said off-handedly. (They were packs of cards that had been used once in some Club or other.) “And you might as well have the latest multiple corkscrew as anybody else, I suppose, eh? Catch!—Now, friends and gentlemen all, oblige me by joining me in a smoke. The curtains, mother? Dash the curtains; Massey don’t get engaged every day, at least I hope he doesn’t; not that there’s any knowing what some of them does under the rose—ha, ha, ha!... Now, Sandys, help yourself. Here’s a cutter. Smoke half of it, and then throw t’other half away; there’s plenty more in the box.—Now, where’s Rainbow? Here you are; you’re my man; you know a little bit of all right when you taste it; half a minute, and I’ll ask your opinion of this——”
Mr. Wellcome’s face became deeply serious as he stooped for a minute; then, as he stood upright again with a bottle in his right hand and a liqueur glass in his left, it shone once more.
“Steady ... there!” He passed an exquisitely filled glass to Mr. Rainbow. “Warm it in your hands a minute first—this way—smell it—and now roll it slowly round the inside o’ your mouth!——”
Had Mr. Rainbow been Cinquevalli balancing the billiard-balls every eye could not have been more intently on him.
“Mmmmmm!” he murmured ecstatically, lips closed, nostrils gently sniffing, eyes fondling the glass.