An admirable rule precluded the introduction of, or even an allusion to, professional subjects, save when the burden of a joke, whose success might excuse the transgression; and thus these crafty, keen intelligences argued, disputed, jested, and disported together, in a vein which less practised talkers would find it hard to rival. To the practice of these social amenities is doubtless ascribable the absence of any rancor from the rough contests and collisions of public life, and thus men of every shade of politics and party, differing even in class and condition, formed admirable social elements, and cohered together to perfection.
As the evening wore on, the company insensibly thinned off. Some of the hard-workers retired early; a few, whose affectation it was to pretend engagements, followed. The “juniors” repaired in different groups to the chambers of their friends, where loo and brandy-and-water awaited them; and at last Repton was left, with only two others, sole occupants of that spacious apartment. His companions were, like himself, soldiers of the “Vieille Garde” veterans who remembered Curran and Lawrence Parsons, John Toler and Saurin, and a host of others, who only needed that the sphere should have been greater to be themselves among the great of the nation.
Rawlins was Repton's schoolfellow, and had been his rival at the Bar for nigh fifty years. Niel, a few years younger than either, was the greatest orator of his time. Both had been opposed to Repton in the present suit, and had held heavy retainers for their services.
“Well, Repton,” said Rawlins, as soon as they were left thus to themselves, “are you pondering over it still? I see that you can't get it out of your head.”
“It is quite true, I cannot,” said Repton. “To summon us all down here,--to bring us some fifty miles away from our accustomed beat, for a trumpery affair like this, is totally beyond me. Had it been an election time, I should probably have understood it.”
“How so?” cried Niel, in the shrill piercing voice peculiar to him, and which imparted to him, even in society, an air of querulous irritability.
“On the principle that Bob Mahon always puts a thoroughbred horse in his gig when he drives over to a country race. He's always ready for a match with what he jocularly calls 'the old screw I 'm driving this minute;' so, Niel, I thought that the retainer for the ejectment might have turned out to be a special fee for the election.”