"Hold, I hear music! Say, boy, I guess we'll try the dandy li'l place right now!" declared Strauss, with an artful introduction of the appropriate accent. They entered, and the host ordered a delicate meal with some grandeur. Philip found the marble-faced walls a little ugly, but distinctly rich and impressive. The gentlemen in the orchestra he found also ugly, also distinctly rich and impressive; particularly the florid gentleman at the piano, whose moustache wandered so persistently into his mouth that he gave up the attempt to blow it away and endeavoured to reconcile himself to the taste. He was so very inflated, would the sudden puncture of a pin dismiss him into thin air? Anyhow the marble seemed solid enough. Philip surreptitiously passed his hand along the marble behind him to assure himself. His head was in a whirl. His friendship with the garrulous, glittering youth (Strauss made dainty play with his fingers to display two quite admirable rings, and there was a gleam of gold cuff-links from shirt-sleeves which he seemed deliberately to have pulled down an excessive inch), his friendship with Strauss had developed at so kinematic a speed that he was half afraid he could hear himself panting over the chocolate éclairs. At least he had breath enough to tender such information as he possessed concerning Jewish boarding-houses, the people who might be considered the "swells" of the community, which synagogues would provide the happiest hunting-grounds for chase not strictly specified, and a number of kindred affairs. He discovered that he was usefuller than he had anticipated. He said to himself humorously that he was blossoming into a man of the world. Much fascinating conversation, or more strictly, monologue, followed, on matters less professional. It was laid down as axiomatic that every young fellow under eighteen, worth the least grain of his salt, knew what's what--a phrase Philip had already encountered, but here, obviously, endowed with a more intimate meaning than hitherto. When Strauss requested him to choose between the Turkish and Russian compartments of his cigarette case, he felt it behoved him to patronize the Turkish, for a recondite technical reason which at once did high credit to his own imagination and satisfactorily impressed his friend. A number of entertaining adventures were narrated by Strauss, illustrative of the nature of what's what. There was Flo in the punt at Richmond. Oh, of course, a married woman, she was! But then her own husband had introduced her with a wink which meant merely, "Go ahead, Wilfrid, old duck, go ahead!" And there was silly old Bobby--insisted on wearing a wedding ring at Bournemouth, and Jimmy Gluckstein had spread the news that he'd settled down in decent matrimony. Did a chap no end of harm, that sort of thing! And, 'struth, yes, ha, ha, ha! that ducky little French bit, Flory! Her mother, moaning with toothache, had interrupted them at about two in the morning.