“The Fancy!”
“Ornaments of the Ring, you know. Come now, surely you know the Ring, my dear. His rooms in St. James's Street are full of them every night. All sorts, you know—featherweights, and heavy-weights, and greyhounds. And the faces! My goodness, you should see them. Such worn-out old images. Knowledge boxes all awry, mouths crooked, and noses that have had the upper-cut. But good men all; good to take their gruel, you know. Monty will have nothing else about him. He was Tom Spring's packer. Never heard of Tom Spring? Tom of Bedford, the incorruptible, you know, only he fought cross that day. Monty lost a thousand, and Tom keeps a public in Holborn now with pictures of the Fancy round the walls.”
Then Kate, with a laugh, said something which Philip did not catch, because Cæsar was rustling the newspaper he was reading.
“Ladies come?” said Ross. “Girls at Monty's suppers? Rather! what should you think? Cleopatra—but you ought to be there. I must be getting off myself very soon. There's a supper coming off next week at Handsome Honey's. Who's Honey? Proprietor of a night-house in the Haymarket. Night-house? You come and see, my dear.”
Cæsar dropped the newspaper and looked across at Philip. The gaze was long and embarrassing, and, for want of better conversation, Philip asked Cæsar if he was thinking.
“Aw, thinking, thinking, and thinking again, sir,” said Cæsar. Then, drawing his chair nearer to Philip's, he added, in a half whisper, “I'm getting a bit of a skute into something, though. See yonder? They're calling his father a miser. The man's racking his tenants and starving his land. But I believe enough the young brass lagh (a weed) is choking the ould grain.”
Cæsar, as he spoke, tipped his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Ross, and, seeing this, Ross interrupted his conversation with Kate to address himself to her father.
“So you've been reading the paper, Mr. Cregeen?”
“Aw, reading and reading,” said Cæsar grumpily. Then in another tone, “You're home again from London, sir? Great doings yonder, they're telling me. Battles, sir, great battles.”
Ross elevated his eyebrows. “Have you heard of them then?” he asked.