"Was you at a banquet again last night, Brooke?" asked the Admiral, during this process. "Yes—yes," replied the other, with splendid indifference. "The Guildhall. All the hote tonn." "Lucky dog," said Sir Peter, smacking his lips: "turtle, eh?" With the air of a man jaded by too much enjoyment Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn condescended to enlarge. "As usual. Believe me, personally I should much prefer seclusion and meditation in the company of poets and philosophers, or dallying with Selina; but my friends are good enough to insist. Only last night," with a side glance to watch the effect he was producing, "Fox—my good friend, the Right Honourable Charles James Fox—said, ’Brooke, my boy’—just like that—’Brooke, my boy, what would our banquets be without you?’" Sir Peter was deeply impressed. He felt himself in touch with the great world. "Gobblessmysoul!" he cried. "What’s your average?" "I am sorry to say, I usually have to wrench myself away from my precious Selina four nights a week." "Think o’ that, now!—By the way, how is she?" Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn turned his lack-lustre eyes fondly towards his house. "Selina? Cheerful, sir. Selina is faint but pursuing. We have now been in the holy state of matrimony five years, and never a word of complaint has fallen from the dear soul’s lips." "Re-markable! And all that time Pomander Walk has seen scarcely anything of her." "She has been much occupied—much occupied," put in Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn, with a deprecatory flourish of his pipe. And, as if in corroboration of his statement, the door of his house opened and a pretty maidservant came out, carrying a year-old baby in her arms. "Chck! chck!" said Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn. "Four olive-branches in five years!" cried Sir Peter, instinctively sidling away from the baby. "Of the female sex," explained Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn: "all of the female sex. This is Number Four. Chck! chck!" Mrs. Poskett, attracted by the baby, had hastily come out of her door carrying her cat, Sempronius, in her arms, and was beckoning to the maid. "And another coming!" roared the Admiral. "That’s right, Brooke! Do your duty, and damn the consequences!—But let’s have a boy next time," he went on, heedless of Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn’s frantic signals, "let ’s have a boy, and make a sailor of him!—Gobblessmysoul!" For Mrs. Poskett, having dropped the cat in the garden, had come up to the tree, and was simpering with pretty modesty. [Illustration: "THAT’S RIGHT, BROOKE! DO YOUR DUTY, AND —— THE CONSEQUENCES!"] "Good afternoon, gentlemen," said she. "Oh—don’t put your pipes away, please. I have been well trained. Alderman Poskett smoked even indoors. May I sit down?" She planted herself between the two men. "Now, go on talking, just as though I was n’t here."