It was nearly half-past four when Hardy and the others rose from the dinner-table. Not that they had been eating all this time. They had prolonged their sitting over coffee and in talk, and there was no obligation to go so as to make way for others, because the hour was neither lunch nor dinner time, and scarce more than two or three tables were occupied.
Nothing had been settled when they stood up and the ladies began to put on their gloves. It was dark: the dining-rooms were lighted up, and in the street the fog, though not dense, was wet as rain; the lamplighters were running along the curbstones, and in a chemist's shop a little way down the green and red waters in the big glass vases dully glimmered like the side-lights of a ship, heading a straight course for the dining-rooms.
"This is just the sort of evening," said Smedley, "in which to visit a friend's grave at some churchyard hereabouts. On evenings of this sort drunken men fall into holes full of water near the docks. The spirit of the Isle of Dogs stalks abroad this evening; you can see him in the sky and taste him in the wind. What shall we do?"
"I told Mrs. Brierley to get some tea ready by six," said Hardy. "This is not an evening to walk about in, and now I vote, Miss Armstrong, that we do not go to a music-hall to-night. I am for lying snug in harbour; are you?"
"I did not care about the idea of the music-hall when you suggested it," she said.
"They are vulgar places, unfit for ladies, particularly in these parts," exclaimed Mrs. Smedley.
"The cleverest performances I've ever seen I've witnessed in music-halls," remarked the captain, "and I never want to hear better singing than I've heard at them. Sometimes a cad, who has no respect for his own sex, who has no respect for himself as a man, and not the faintest sense in the world of what is due to women, comes on in evening dress, a white shirt blazing with studs, and a tall hat, which he is perpetually shifting upon his head: and this fiend sings a song full of double entendres, and he sings in greasy notes with a lickerish eye; and, strangely enough, I have never yet seen any man rise from amongst the audience, climb over the orchestra, and kick the animal round and round the stage into the development of a fresh sort of music and another kind of words. Otherwise, if you want talent, go to the music-halls."
"Shall we go to our lodgings and spend the evening there?" said Mrs. Smedley.
"Yes, and drink tea with us," exclaimed Hardy; "and before bedtime, Smedley, we shall have settled the business of Miss Julia Armstrong."