Everybody has probably experienced the horror of getting one drop of honey or some other viscous fluid on to the inside of his cuff. Though there is only just one drop of it, its presence spreads until the whole arm seems to be sticky with it. In such quiet mysterious sort Leonard began to spread. Mrs. Theobald, the desire of whose life was to entertain largely, asked him regularly and constantly to her dinner-parties, and her guests extended their invitations to him. He took this set of rooms, of which mention has been made, and with considerable foresight did them up in the violent colours which were only just beginning to come into fashion. It was no part of his plan to indulge his new friends with expensive entertainments, but just now, strawberries being so cheap, he found it an excellent investment to ask two or three ladies to tea, and found that four invitations to tea usually brought him in three invitations to dinner, which was a good dividend. To employ a smart tailor was another necessary outlay, and he affected socks of the same colour as his brilliant tie, and carried a malacca cane with a top of cloudy amber. But soon, always quick to perceive the things that really interested him, he saw that though he was getting on quite nicely with women, their husbands and brothers did not seem to think much of him, and he abandoned the malacca cane, and took up golf again. Before long he hit a very happy kind of mean, and made himself the sort of young man who is not out of place either in town or in the country. He had several invitations to country-houses during the months of August and September, and when he came back to settle in London again in October, he got elected to a club of decent standing, and may be considered launched. His keel no longer grated, so to speak, on the sand: he was afloat in a shallow sea of acquaintances, with no sort or kind of friend among them.