I explained, snorting, what had befallen. "Ay," said he quietly, "you didn't go the right way to work. You should have stood on the hearth-rug and fired off epigrams. That's what I did after I had written _Down in the Doldrums_, and was fed with crumpets in consequence." A woman plumped down by my side and twisted her hands into knots, and hung her eyes over her cheek-bones. I thought it was too many muffins, till she said: "Tell me, oh, tell me, was such-and-such in such a one of your books--was he _real_? Was he _quite_ real? Oh, how lovely! How sweet! How precious!" She alluded to that drunken ruffian Mulvaney, who would have driven her into fits had he ever set foot on her doorstep in the flesh. I caught the half of a wink in my friend's eye as he removed himself and left me alone to tell fibs about the evolution of Private Mulvaney. I said anything that came uppermost, and my answers grew so wild that the woman departed. Then I heard the hostess whispering to a girl, a nice, round, healthy English maiden. "Go and talk to him," she said. "Talk to him about his books." I gritted my teeth, and waited till the maiden was close at hand and about to begin. There was a lovely young man at the end of the room sucking a stick, and I felt sure that the maiden would much have preferred talking to him. She smiled prefatorily. "It's hot here," I said; "let's go over to the window"; and I plumped down on a three-seated settee, with my back to the young man, leaving only one place for the maiden. I was right. I signalled up the man who had written _Down in the Doldrums_, and talked to him as fast as I knew how. When he had to go, and the young man with him, the maiden became enthusiastic, not to say gushing. But I knew that those compliments were for value received. Then she explained that she was going out to India to stay with her married aunt, wherefore she became as a sister unto me on the spot. Her mamma did not seem to know much about Indian outfits, and I waxed eloquent on the subject. "It's all nonsense," I said, "to fill your boxes with things that can be made just as well in the country. What you want are walking-dresses and dinner-dresses as good as ever you can get, and gloves tinned up, and odds and ends of things generally. All the rest, unless you're extravagant, the _dharzee_ can make in the verandah. Take underclothing, for instance." I was conscious that my loud and cheerful voice was ploughing through one of those ghostly silences that sometimes fall upon a company. The English only wear their outsides in company. They have nothing to do with underclothing. I could feel that without being told. So the silence cut short the one matter in which I could really have been of use.