"Ladds," said Ladds. "Nibs, cocoa-nibs—pure aroma—best breakfast-digester—blessing to mothers—perfect fragrance."
"His name is Ladds; and he wishes to communicate to you the fact that he is the son of the man who made an immense fortune—immense, Tommy?"
Ladds nodded.
"By a crafty compound known as 'Ladds' Patent Anti-Dyspeptic Cocoa.' This is Ladd's servant, John Boimer, the best servant who ever put his leg across pig-skin; and my name is Roland Dunquerque. People generally call me Jack; I don't know why, but they do."
Their host bowed to each, including the servant, who coloured with pleasure at Jack's description of him; but he shook hands with Ladds.
"One of ours," he said. "My name is Lawrence Colquhoun. I sold out before you joined. I came here as you see. And—now, gentlemen, I think I hear the first sounds of dinner. Boimer—you will allow me, Ladds?—you will find claret and champagne behind that curtain. Pardon a hermit's fare. I think they have laid out such a table as the wilderness can boast in the next room."
The dinner was not altogether what a man might order at the Junior United, but it was good. There was venison, there was a curry, there was some mountain quail, there was claret, and there was champagne—both good, especially the claret. Then there was coffee.
The Honourable Roland Dunquerque, whom we will call in future, what everybody always called him, Jack, ate and drank like Friar John. The keen mountain air multiplied his normal twist by ten. Mr. Gilead P. Beck, who sat down to dinner perfectly unabashed by his rags, was good as a trencherman, but many plates behind the young Englishman. Mr. Lawrence Colquhoun, their host, went on talking almost as if they were in London, only now and then he found himself behind the world. It was his ignorance of the last Derby, the allusion to an old and half-forgotten story, perhaps his use of little phrases—not slang phrases, but those delicately-shaded terms which imply knowledge of current things—which showed him to have been out of London and Paris for more than one season.
"Four years," he said, "since I left England."
"But you will come back to it again?"