“You shall have the paper,” says Mr. Guppy. “He shall bring it down. But you had better not be seen about here. Sit on our staircase and read. It’s a quiet place.”
Jobling nods intelligence and acquiescence. The sagacious Smallweed supplies him with the newspaper and occasionally drops his eye upon him from the landing as a precaution against his becoming disgusted with waiting and making an untimely departure. At last the enemy retreats, and then Smallweed fetches Mr. Jobling up.
“Well, and how are you?” says Mr. Guppy, shaking hands with him.
“So, so. How are you?”
Mr. Guppy replying that he is not much to boast of, Mr. Jobling ventures on the question, “How is she ?” This Mr. Guppy resents as a liberty, retorting, “Jobling, there are chords in the human mind—” Jobling begs pardon.
“Any subject but that!” says Mr. Guppy with a gloomy enjoyment of his injury. “For there are chords, Jobling—”
Mr. Jobling begs pardon again.
During this short colloquy, the active Smallweed, who is of the dinner party, has written in legal characters on a slip of paper, “Return immediately.” This notification to all whom it may concern, he inserts in the letter-box, and then putting on the tall hat at the angle of inclination at which Mr. Guppy wears his, informs his patron that they may now make themselves scarce.
Accordingly they betake themselves to a neighbouring dining-house, of the class known among its frequenters by the denomination slap-bang, where the waitress, a bouncing young female of forty, is supposed to have made some impression on the susceptible Smallweed, of whom it may be