der
glass! Aggravatingly appetising, but absolutely uninteresting to the two
hungry art critics. We soon were in a cab and at the Garrick. As we
pulled up, the greatest _gourmet_ of the Club, that clever actor, Arthur
Cecil, greeted us:

"Hallo, Frank, where have you two come from?"

"Oh, Arthur, _such_ luck! Furniss and I have just had the most
_recherche_ lunch you could imagine."

"H'm--hullo--h'm--where? The deuce you have! Lucky dogs! Eh, what was it
like?"

"Oh, you can see it for yourself; it's going on now at the French
Cookery Exhibition in Willis's Rooms. Special invitation--ah, here's a
ticket."

"Thanks, old chap! what a treat! I'm off there! No, no; you fellows
mustn't pay the cab--I'll do that. Here, driver--Willis's Rooms--look
sharp!"

Arthur Cecil undoubtedly was a quaint fellow and a clever actor, but he
had an insatiable appetite. One would never have thought so, judging
from appearance: his clever, clean-cut face, his small, thin figure,
together with the little hand-bag he always carried, rather suggested a
lawyer or a clergyman. His eccentricity was a combination of
absent-mindedness and irritability. The latter failing, he told me,
would at times take complete control of him: for instance, he had to
leave a train before his journey was completed, as he felt it impossible
to sit in the carriage and look at the alarm bell without pulling it. I
have watched him seated in the smoking-room of the club we both
attended, in which the star-light in the centre of the ceiling was
shaded by a rather primitive screen of stretched tissue paper, gazing at
it for half-an-hour at a time, and eventually taking all the coins out
of his pocket to throw them one after another at the immediate object of
his irritation. He frequently succeeded in penetrating the screen, the
coins remaining on the top of it, to the delight of the astonished
waiters.

His eccentricity--perhaps I ought to say in this case his
absent-mindedness--is illustrated by an incident which happened on the
morning of the funeral of a great friend of his. As Cecil (his real name
was Blount) was having his bath, he was suddenly inspired with some idea
for a song; so, pulling his sponge-bath into the adjoining sitting-room
closer to the piano, he placed a chair in it, and sat down to try it
over. A friend, rushing in to fetch him to the funeral, found him so
seated, singing and playing, balancing the dripping sponge on the top of
his head.