u know."

"Do it then, and let 'em both know that you're there. Yes, Parkyns, I'll
divide. And, Clavvy, you can come in now in Griggs' place." Then Captain
Clavering stripped himself for the battle.

Chapter XXI

The Blue Posts

"Oh; so you've come to see me. I am so glad." With these words Sophie
Gordeloup welcomed Harry Clavering to her room in Mount Street early one
morning not long after her interview with Captain Archie in Lady Ongar's
presence. On the previous evening Harry had received a note from Lady
Ongar, in which she upbraided him for having left unperformed her
commission with reference to Count Pateroff. The letter had begun quite
abruptly. "I think it unkind of you that you do not come to me. I asked
you, to see a certain person on my behalf, and you have not done so.
Twice he has been here. Once I was in truth out. He came again the next
evening at nine, and I was then ill, and had gone to bed. You understand
it all, and must know how this annoys me. I thought you would have done
this for me, and I thought I should have seen you.--J."

This note he found at his lodgings when he returned home at night, and
on the following morning he went in his despair direct to Mount Street,
on his way to the Adelphi. It was not yet ten o'clock when he was shown
into Madam Gordeloup's presence, and as regarded her dress, he did not
find her to be quite prepared for morning visitors. But he might well be
indifferent on that matter, as the lady seemed to disregard the
circumstance altogether. On her head she wore what he took to be a
nightcap, though I will not absolutely undertake to say that she had
slept in that very head-dress. There were frills to it, and a certain
attempt at prettinesses had been made; but then the attempt had been
made so long ago, and the frills were so ignorant of starch and all
frillish propensities, that it hardly could pretend to decency. A great
white wrapper she also wore, which might not have been objectionable had
it not been so long worn that it looked like a university college
surplice at the end of a long vacation. Her slippers had all the ease
which age could give them, and above the slippers, neatness, to say the
least of it, did not predominate. But Sophie herself seemed to be quite
at her ease in spite of these deficiencies, and received our hero with
an eager, pointed welcome, which I can hardly describe as affectionate,
and which Harry did not at all understand.