"Yes—one always knows where to find me at this hour. 9 o'clock p.m.—cigar—Hyde Park. There is not a man in England so regular in his habits."
Here the friends reached a drawing-room in which the Member of Parliament seldom sat, for his private apartments were all on the ground floor.
"But it is the strangest whim of yours, Harley," said he.
"What?"
"To affect detestation of ground-floors."
"Affect! O sophisticated man, of the earth, earthy! Affect!—nothing less natural to the human soul than a ground-floor. We are quite far enough from heaven, mount as many stairs as we will, without groveling by preference."
"According to that symbolical view of the case," said Audley, "you should lodge in an attic."
"So I would, but that I abhor new slippers. As for hair-brushes, I am indifferent!"
"What have slippers and hair-brushes to do with attics?"
"Try! Make your bed in an attic, and the next morning you will have neither slippers nor hair-brushes!"