The meeting ended, after the usual courtesies and votes of thanks, and Eddy took his friend away.
“You must come and be introduced to Datcherd,” he said. “I wonder where he’s got to.”
His friend looked doubtful. “He could have come and spoken to me in the room if he’d wanted. Perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps he’d be tired after his journey. He didn’t look extraordinarily cheery, somehow. I think I’ll not bother him.”
“Oh, he’s all right. He only looked like a Home Ruler listening to Orange cheering. I expect they don’t, as a rule, look very radiant, do they?”
“They do not. But you don’t mean he’d mind my coming to speak, surely? Because, if he does, I ought never to have come. You told me they had lectures from all sorts of people on all sorts of things.”
“So they do. No, of course he wouldn’t mind. But that’s the way he’s bound to look in public, as a manifesto, don’t you see. Like a clergyman listening to a Nonconformist preacher. He has to assert his principles.”
“But a Church clergyman probably wouldn’t get a Nonconformist to preach in his church. They don’t, I believe, as a rule.”
Eddy was forced to admit that, unfortunately, they didn’t.
His friend, a person of good manners, was a little cross. “We’ve had him offended now, and I don’t blame him. You should have told me. I should never have come. It’s such rustic manners, to break into a person’s Club and preach things he hates. I could tell he hated it, by the look in his eye. He kept the other end of the room, the way he wouldn’t break out at me and say anything ferocious. No, I’m not coming to look for him; I wouldn’t dare look him in the face; you can go by yourself. You’ve fairly let me in, Oliver. I hate being rude to the wrong side, it gives them such an advantage. They’re rude enough to us, as a rule, to do for the two. I don’t want to have anything to do with his little Radical Club; if he wants to keep it to himself and his Radical friends, he’s welcome.”
“You’re talking nonsense,” Eddy said. “Did it behave like a Radical club to-night?”