"I know Tyler's very well," answered Margaret, coming to her aid. "Jolly useful place it is, too. But I don't remember the band."
"I used to go to the Queen's Hall," put in Dr. Jakes hoarsely. "Monday afternoons, when I could get away. And afterwards, have dinner in Soho."
From the window, where Mr. Samson lay in an armchair in apparent torpor, came a wheeze, and the single word, "Simpson's."
Margaret laughed. "How sumptuous," she said. "Now, Mr. Ford, you tell us where you used to go."
"Club," answered Ford, promptly. "I had to have something for my subscription, you know, so I went there and read the papers."
Mrs. Jakes was watching her husband anxiously, while Ford and Margaret took up the burden of inconsequent talk and made a screen of trivialities for her. But to-night Dr. Jakes needed expression as much as whisky; there was the hopeless, ineffectual anger of a baited animal in his stare as he faced them.
"Why aren't any of you looking at me?" he said suddenly.
None answered; only Mr. Samson sat up on his creaking armchair of basketwork with an amazed, "Eh? What 's that?" Margaret stared helplessly and Mrs. Jakes, white-faced and tense, murmured imploringly, "Eustace."
"Dodging with your eyes and babbling about tea-shops," said the doctor hotly. "You think, because a man 's a bit—"
"Eustace," cried Mrs. Jakes, clasping her hands. "Eustace dear."