Lightwood helped him to some more of that stuff, but it had been cooling, and didn’t answer now.
“Pooh,” said Eugene, spitting it out among the ashes. “Tastes like the wash of the river.”
“Are you so familiar with the flavour of the wash of the river?”
“I seem to be tonight. I feel as if I had been half drowned, and swallowing a gallon of it.”
“Influence of locality,” suggested Lightwood.
“You are mighty learned tonight, you and your influences,” returned Eugene. “How long shall we stay here?”
“How long do you think?”
“If I could choose, I should say a minute,” replied Eugene, “for the Jolly Fellowship Porters are not the jolliest dogs I have known. But I suppose we are best here until they turn us out with the other suspicious characters, at midnight.”
Thereupon he stirred the fire, and sat down on one side of it. It struck eleven, and he made believe to compose himself patiently. But gradually he took the fidgets in one leg, and then in the other leg, and then in one arm, and then in the other arm, and then in his chin, and then in his back, and then in his forehead, and then in his hair, and then in his nose; and then he stretched himself recumbent on two chairs, and groaned; and then he started up.
“Invisible insects of diabolical activity swarm in this place. I am tickled and twitched all over. Mentally, I have now committed a burglary under the meanest circumstances, and the myrmidons of justice are at my heels.”