“It is only in plays and poems, sir, that you find your adventurer clean and splendid. We were muzzle to muzzle with those heathen for half a day; the prison they put us in was monstrously dirty; and the vegetation they plant in their gardens and about their fields seems to have been created with a grudge against people who have to run. We ran, sir, like heroes, despite aloes, cacti, and thorns like a regiment of foot with sloped pikes. After such incidents one has a tendency toward torn clothes.” My lord nodded. “Still, Jack,” said he, “when you fall in a ditch and get muddied to the chin, you do not stroll home through the park at three in the afternoon. You should read _Don Quixote_, sir—a great book that.” “I am more of a philosopher than the Spaniard.” His father did not trouble to suppress a sarcastic smile. “Oh, if you are a philosopher I have nothing more to say, save that you have chosen the wrong school. There is the philosophy of clothes to be considered at this happy period of ours. If you wish to try your Diogenes’ humor, go to court in some such scraffle. You would be clapped in the Tower for insulting the King.” John Gore laughed. “Who himself knows what ragged stockings and flea-ridden beds mean.” “Exactly so, sir, and therefore any tactless allusion to the past would be uncourtierlike in the extreme.” My lord betrayed some impatience in his last retort, very possibly because he beheld a group of acquaintances approaching with all the niceness of fashionable distinction. The young gallants of the court had all the merciless cynicism of premature middle-age. Genius, to prove itself, scintillated with satire. Even when the youngsters laughed, their laughter symbolized an epigram, a caricature, or a lampoon. Lord Gore advanced very valiantly under the enemy’s fire. The party numbered among its members Tom Chiffinch, the redoubtable royal pimp. There was an ironical lifting of hats. John Gore’s costume had interested the party for the last twenty yards of its approach. My lord would have marched past with flags flying. But from some instinct of devilry the gentlemen appeared overjoyed at the _rencontre_. “We must take you with us to the Mall, my lord.” “His Majesty has a match there.” “Bring your friend with you, sir. By-the-way, who is he?” And Chiffinch took Stephen Gore familiarly by the button and dropped his voice to a forced whisper. My lord’s dignity did not falter. He had caught a peculiar look in his son’s eyes that pricked the pride in him. “Gentlemen, Captain John Gore, my son.” They bowed, all of them, with sarcastic deference. “Delighted, sir.” “You have seen hard service, sir.” “No doubt you are a great traveller. May I ask your honor whether it is true that the Spaniards in Peru grow their beards down to their belts?” The man in the red coat showed no trace of temper.