uitted the army, but still wore his military beard,
which gave to his fair pink face a fierce and lion-like look. He was
extraordinarily glad to see me, as only men are glad who live in a small
town, or in dull company. There is no destroyer of friendships like
London, where a man has no time to think of his neighbour, and has
far too many friends to care for them. He told me in a breath of his
marriage, and how happy he was, and straight insisted that I must
come home to dinner, and see more of Angelica, who had invited me
herself--didn't I hear her?

"Mrs. Berry asked YOU, Frank; but I certainly did not hear her ask ME!"

"She would not have mentioned the dinner but that she meant me to ask
you. I know she did," cried Frank Berry. "And, besides--hang it--I'm
master of the house. So come you shall. No ceremony, old boy--one or two
friends--snug family party--and we'll talk of old times over a bottle of
claret."

There did not seem to me to be the slightest objection to this
arrangement, except that my boots were muddy, and my coat of the morning
sort. But as it was quite impossible to go to Paris and back again in
a quarter of an hour, and as a man may dine with perfect comfort to
himself in a frock-coat, it did not occur to me to be particularly
squeamish, or to decline an old friend's invitation upon a pretext so
trivial.

Accordingly we walked to a small house in the Avenue de Paris, and were
admitted first into a small garden ornamented by a grotto, a fountain,
and several nymphs in plaster-of-Paris, then up a mouldy old steep stair
into a hall, where a statue of Cupid and another of Venus welcomed us
with their eternal simper; then through a salle-a-manger where covers
were laid for six; and finally to a little saloon, where Fido the dog
began to howl furiously according to his wont.

It was one of the old pavilions that had been built for a pleasure-house
in the gay days of Versailles, ornamented with abundance of damp Cupids
and cracked gilt cornices, and old mirrors let into the walls, and
gilded once, but now painted a dingy French white. The long low windows
looked into the court, where the fountain played its ceaseless dribble,
surrounded by numerous rank creepers and weedy flowers, but in the midst
of which the statues stood with their bases quite moist and green.

I hate fountains and statues in dark confined places: that cheerless,
endless plashing of water is the most inhospitable sound ever heard.