A few weeks after the Schröders' reception, Beresford and Simnel, who had been dining together, strolled into the club soon after midnight. Beresford was a member; Simnel came as his guest; the latter would have been safe of election, as his tact and shrewdness were very generally known and highly esteemed amongst the men, but he always refused to be put in nomination. "It's all very well for Beresford," he would say; "he's a Commissioner, and can do as he likes; I'm an upper servant; and though you're a deuced pleasant set of fellows, you haven't got a great name for respectability with the B.P., or British Public, whom I serve. It's horribly virtuous, is the B.P., and is always in bed before you sweet youths meet in this bower of bliss. So that though I'm delighted to come occasionally with Charley and pay you a visit, I must be in a position, if called upon, to swear that I'm not an affiliated member of your sacred brotherhood." The other men understood all this, and liked Simnel better for his candour; and there was no visitor at the Flybynights more welcome than he. It was a great occasion at the Flybynights; one of the members, Mr. Plinlimmon the poet, had that day been giving a lecture "On Sentiment, its Use and Abuse," at St. Cecilia's Hall, and had had great success. For Mr. Plinlimmon was not a mere common poet who made verses and sold them; he was cousin to Lady Heritage, whose husband was the Lord Privy-Purse; and he was very well off, and wrote only for his amusement, and consequently was the very man to be patronised. Moreover, he wrote weak little verselets, like very-much-diluted Wordsworth, abounding in passages quotable for Academy pictures of bread-and-butter children; and he was much taken up by Mr. Spicklittle, the editor of the _Boomerang Magazine_, so soon as it was understood that he stood well with the fashionable world. And there had been a very fashionable audience at St. Cecilia's Hall to hear Mr. Plinlimmon on "Sentiment," and the stalls had been filled with what was afterwards stated in the public prints to be the rank and flower of the land; and high-born women had complimented him on the conclusion of his labours, and had voted his lecture charming; all of which thoroughly consoled the lecturer, and enabled him to forget the rude conduct of certain rough-spoken critics in the body of the hall, who had loudly cried "Bosh!" at his finest passages, and gone out with much shuffling of thick boots and dropping of heavy walking-sticks long before his peroration. And after dining with a countess, Mr. Plinlimmon thought that the right thing was to go down and show himself at the Flybynights Club, of which he was a member; and he had entered the room just before Beresford and Simnel arrived. "Hail, Plinlimmon!" shouted Mr. Magnus the historian, with kindly glances beaming through his spectacles; "hail, bard of the what-d'ye-call-it! How air you, colonel?"