“They’re Attic Symposia,” said Huckaby.
“I’ve been thinking of a series of articles on them, after the manner of the Noctes Ambrosianæ,” said Vandermeer.
“They would quite bear it,” Huckaby agreed. “I think we get better talk here than anywhere else I know. I’m a sometime Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge,”—he rolled out the alliterative phrase with great sonority—“and I know the talk in the Combination Room; but it’s pedantic—pedantic. Not ripe and mellow like ours.”
“I’m not a brainy chap like you others,” said Billiter, wiping his dragoon’s moustache, “but I like to have my mind improved, now and then.”
“Do you know the Noctes, Huckaby?” asked Quixtus. “Of course you do. What do you think of them?”
“I suppose you like them,” replied Huckaby, “because you are an essentially scientific and not a literary man. But I think them dull.”
“I don’t call them dull,” Quixtus argued, “but to my mind they’re pretentious. I don’t like their sham heartiness, their slap-on-the-back-and-how-are-you-old-fellow tone, their impossible Pantagruelian banquets——”
The hungry wolf’s face of Vandermeer lit up. “That’s what I like about them—the capons—the pies—the cockaleeky—the haggises——”
“I remember a supper-party at Oxford,” said Billiter, “when there was a haggis, and one chap who was awfully tight insisted that a haggis ought to be turned like an omelette or tossed like a pancake. He tossed it. My God! You never saw such a thing in your life!”
So they all talked according to the several necessities of their natures, and at last Quixtus informed his guests that he was to sit for his portrait to Miss Clementina Wing.