if I can put you in before Mr. de Gales if
you're in a hurry, sir," or "Scrambled eggs, sir--it'll make a bit of a
change." And when George agreed, Downs would exhibit a restrained but
real satisfaction. Yes, George had been very lucky. The club too was
lucky. The oldest member, who being paralysed had not visited the club
for eleven years, died and bequeathed ten thousand pounds to the
institution where he had happily played cards for several decades.
Pickering's was refurnished, and the stringency of its rules
re-established. The right wing of the committee wished that the oldest
member could have managed to die a year or two earlier and so obviated
the crisis. It was recognized, however, by the more reasonable, that you
cannot have everything in this world.

Pickering's was very dull; but it was still Pickering's. George was
often bored at Pickering's. He soon reached the stage at which a club
member asserts gloomily that the club cookery is simply damnable.
Nevertheless he would have been desolated to leave Pickering's. The
place was useful to him in another respect than the purely material. He
learnt there the code which governs the familiar relations of men about
town.

On the night of the Cafe Royal dinner, George and Lucas reclined in two
easy chairs in the inner smoking-room of Pickering's. They were alone.
Through the wide archway that marked the division between the inner and
the outer smoking-rooms they could see one solitary old gentleman dozing
in an attitude of abandonment, a magazine on his knees. Ash-trays were
full of ash and cigarette ends and matches. Newspapers were scattered
around, some folded inside out, some not folded, some whose component
sheets had been divided for ever like the members of a ruined family.
The windows were open, and one gave a view of the Court's watchful
lamp-post, and the other of the house--now occupied by an art dealer and
a commission agent--where the Duke had known both illusion and
disillusion. The delicate sound of the collision of billiard-balls came
from somewhere, and the rat-tatting of a tape-machine from somewhere
else. The two friends had arrived at the condition of absolute wisdom
and sagacity and tolerance which is apt to be achieved at a late hour in
clubs by young and old men who have discussed at length the phenomena of
society.

"Well, I must be toddling," said Lucas, yawning as he looked idly at the
coloured horses on each wall who were for ever passi