What a curious fact it is, that in the eyes of all old men girls are always unobjectionable. Probably from their very age they look upon even the hoydens, the "mannish," and the fast merely as big and rather naughty children; therefore, all the more interesting. Let a girl be thoroughly detested by her own sex--and to be thoroughly detested by her own sex she must at least be tolerably good-looking--she is certain to be the delight of all the old gentlemen of her circle.
Haggard was in a particularly good humour, for he was hourly expecting the arrival of his _fidus Achates_, Lord Spunyarn. He was impatient to hear all the talk, the gossip and the scandal, which he had missed during his prolonged absence from the Pandemonium Club. Though they don't acknowledge it, your average club man is as great a scandalmonger and gossip as any village crone; but being by nature more cautious than are women, they hardly ever commit themselves upon paper. A yarn is told by A to B, as a yarn; B tells it to C, as a rumour he has heard; C gives it a tail, and imparts it under the seal of secrecy to D; over the whist table, E, F, and G get hold of it, like the rolling snow-ball, considerably increased in magnitude; sly H overhears it and gives it at once into a society journal, where it becomes public property; perhaps it may even result in an action for libel. Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung. Besides, perhaps Haggard was a little nervous as to his reception; since he was last at the Pandemonium he had killed a man, not that that fact troubled his conscience in any way. Now-a-days a gambler is by no means an outcast at a smart club, particularly the lucky man; for he is placed on a sort of moral pedestal by his less successful rivals. Still the Lamb episode was not forgotten at the Pandemonium, and this, coupled with the affair of poor Barbiche, caused Georgie's husband to rather dread the cold shoulder. The presence of Spunyarn too would certainly be a break in the monotony of the life at The Warren.
Haggard drove over some five miles on that hot summer day about noon, in the squire's well-appointed dog-cart, to meet his friend Lord Spunyarn, and it was with unaffected pleasure that he shook hands with him upon the platform of the little station. Had they been Frenchmen, they would have rushed into each other's arms and saluted mutually on either cheek. As it was, they merely smiled and nodded, with a mutual, "How are you, old man?" and a careless inquiry from Lord Spunyarn as to the health of "your people" followed as a matter of course. During the five-and-twenty minutes' sharp drive home, they talked of the heat, the crops and the fishing; for the squire's smart groom rendered anything but general conversation impossible: the bay mare, too, was full of oats, and a puller.