ss to say the fumes of
his recent orgy spoke then with some asperity in a curious bitter way
foreign to his sober state. Probably the homelife to which Mr B attached
the utmost importance had not been all that was needful or he hadn't
been familiarised with the right sort of people. With a touch of fear
for the young man beside him whom he furtively scrutinised with an air
of some consternation remembering he had just come back from Paris,
the eyes more especially reminding him forcibly of father and sister,
failing to throw much light on the subject, however, he brought to mind
instances of cultured fellows that promised so brilliantly nipped in the
bud of premature decay and nobody to blame but themselves. For instance
there was the case of O'Callaghan, for one, the halfcrazy faddist,
respectably connected though of inadequate means, with his mad vagaries
among whose other gay doings when rotto and making himself a nuisance
to everybody all round he was in the habit of ostentatiously sporting in
public a suit of brown paper (a fact). And then the usual _denouement_
after the fun had gone on fast and furious he got 1190 landed into hot
water and had to be spirited away by a few friends, after a strong hint
to a blind horse from John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so as not to
be made amenable under section two of the criminal law amendment act,
certain names of those subpoenaed being handed in but not divulged
for reasons which will occur to anyone with a pick of brains. Briefly,
putting two and two together, six sixteen which he pointedly turned a
deaf ear to, Antonio and so forth, jockeys and esthetes and the tattoo
which was all the go in the seventies or thereabouts even in the house
of lords because early in life the occupant of the throne, then heir
apparent, the other members of the upper ten and other high personages
simply following in the footsteps of the head of the state, he reflected
about the errors of notorieties and crowned heads running counter to
morality such as the Cornwall case a number of years before under their
veneer in a way scarcely intended by nature, a thing good Mrs Grundy,
as the law stands, was terribly down on though not for the reason they
thought they were probably whatever it was except women chiefly who were
always fiddling more or less at one another it being largely a matter of
dress and all the rest of it. Ladies who like distinctive underclothing
should, and every welltailored man m