I felt quite shy at being introduced to such an entertainment, and inwardly wondered how long it would be before I, with my eight shillings a week, would be able to afford the like.
We were a little early, and Doubleday therefore pressed us into the service to help him, as he called it, “get all snug and ship-shape,” which meant boiling some eggs, emptying the jam-pots into glass dishes, and cutting up a perfect stack of bread.
“Who’s coming to-night?” said Crow, with whom, by the way, I had become speedily reconciled in our mutual occupation.
“Oh, the usual lot,” said Doubleday, with the air of a man who gives “feeds” every day of his life. “The two Wickhams, and Joe Whipcord, and the Field-Marshal, and an Irish fellow who is lodging with him. We ought to have a jolly evening.”
In due time the guests arrived, Mr Joseph Whipcord being the earliest. He was a freckled youth of a most horsey get up, in clothes so tight that it seemed a marvel how he could ever sit down, and a straw in his mouth which appeared to grow there. Close on his heels came the two Wickhams, whose chief attractiveness seemed to be that they were twins, and as like as two peas.
“Hullo! here you are,” was Doubleday’s greeting. “Which is which of you to-night, eh?”
“I’m Adam,” replied one of the two, meekly.
“All serene, Adam. Stick this piece of paper in your button-hole, and then we’ll know you from Abel. By the way, Whipcord, I suppose you never heard my last joke, did you?”
“Never heard your first yet,” replied Whipcord, shifting his straw to the other corner of his mouth.
“Oh, yes you did,” retorted Doubleday, who as usual always preferred the laugh when it was on his own side. “Don’t you remember me telling Crow last time you came that you were a fellow who knew a thing or two? That was a joke, eh, twins?”