“But you live still farther, don’t you?” said Coleman. “With venerable parents, and so forth. One foot in the grave and all that. Shall we mingle hornpipes with funerals?” He began to hum Chopin’s ‘Funeral March’ at three times its proper speed, and seizing the young stranger in his arms, two-stepped two or three turns on the pavement, then released his hold and let him go reeling against the area railings. “No, I don’t mean the family mansion,” said Gumbril. “I mean my own rooms. They’re quite near. In Great Russell Street.” “I never knew you had any rooms, Theodore,” said Mrs. Viveash. “Nobody did.” Why should they know now? Because the wind seemed almost a country wind? “There’s drink there,” he said. “Splendid!” cried the young man. They were all splendid people. “There’s some gin,” said Gumbril. “Capital aphrodisiac!” Coleman commented. “Some light white wine.” “Diuretic.” “And some whisky.” “The great emetic,” said Coleman. “Come on.” And he struck up the March of the Fascisti. “_Giovinezza, giovinezza, primavera di bellezza_....” The noise went fading down the dark, empty streets. The gin, the white wine, and even, for the sake of the young stranger, who wanted to sample everything, the emetic whisky, were produced. “I like your rooms,” said Mrs. Viveash, looking round her. “And I resent your secrecy about them, Theodore.” “Drink, puppy!” Coleman refilled the boy’s glass. “Here’s to secrecy,” Gumbril proposed. Shut it tightly, keep it dark, cover it up. Be silent, prevaricate, lie outright. He laughed and drank. “Do you remember,” he went on, “those instructive advertisements of Eno’s Fruit Salt they used to have when we were young? There was one little anecdote about a doctor who advised the hypochondriacal patient who had come to consult him, to go and see Grimaldi, the clown; and the patient answered, ‘I am Grimaldi.’ Do you remember?” “No,” said Mrs. Viveash. “And why do you?” “Oh, I don’t know. Or rather, I do know,” Gumbril corrected himself, and laughed again. The young man suddenly began to boast. “I lost two hundred pounds yesterday playing _chemin de fer_,” he said, and looked round for applause. Coleman patted his curly head. “Delicious child!” he said. “You’re positively Hogarthian.” Angrily, the boy pushed him away. “What are you doing?” he shouted; then turned and addressed himself once more to the others. “I couldn’t afford it, you know—not a bloody penny of it. Not my money, either.” He seemed to find it exquisitely humorous. “And that two hundred wasn’t all,” he added, almost expiring with mirth. “Tell Coleman how you borrowed his beard, Theodore.” Gumbril was looking intently into his glass, as though he hoped to see in its pale mixture of gin and Sauterne visions, as in a crystal, of the future. Mrs. Viveash touched him on the arm and repeated her injunction. “Oh, that!” said Gumbril rather irritably. “No. It isn’t an interesting story.”