‘An idle, drunken, good-for-nothing vagabond,’ said Beattie, as soon as he had disappeared. ‘I advise you not to speak to him. He will take all sorts of liberties with you if you allow him.’ Then he looked over the abstracts, explained one or two points, and ended by asking Alec to dine with him that evening at the Holborn Restaurant. Of course Alec accepted the invitation; but he did so without any feeling of pleasure. Beattie had been civil, and even friendly; but somehow Alec could not bring himself to like him. He smiled too often, and his smile was a purely conventional one, from the teeth outwards, fading away in a moment and leaving his face as stern and cold as before. His features were harsh, and his long upper lip gave an unpleasant look to his face. But most of all Alec disliked his accent. It smacked strongly of affectation. The Scotch intonation was still there and refused to be effaced, while the English manner of speaking had evidently been laboriously grafted upon the original stock. The result was not satisfactory to anyone but Mr. Beattie himself. Soon after Alec and his host had taken their seats at table that evening, Mr. Beattie elicited the fact that Mr. James Semple was virtually at the head of his uncle’s oil-works, and that in all probability he would be the old man’s heir; and from that moment Alec became a very secondary person in his eyes. The two had not much in common, and the conversation languished till it seemed at one point as if it would die out altogether. As the evening proceeded, however, and the wine in the bottles diminished, matters improved; and by the time the two young men had lit their cigars, Beattie was giving his views on the state of society and the general scheme of things with considerable freedom. ‘There’s no place in the world,’ said he, with much emphasis, ‘where there’s so many beggars on horseback, as there are in and about this city of London. Go out on the streets, or go to any of the fashionable suburbs, and see the kind of people who roll past in their carriages. If you were to take the master out, put on his coachman’s livery, and set him on the box, put his overcoat and hat on the coachman and get _him_ inside, no one would notice the difference.’ ‘But there is the aristocracy.’ ‘True; but it is the rich parvenus, the nobodies, that make London. And, after all, I fancy a long purse and a lavish hand will win a man’s way into any house in this country. Look at Baron Brand, as he calls himself! I remember when that man came to our office ready to do any dirty work we liked to put him to. And see where he is now.’ ‘But there are surely circles of men of letters, of artists,’ began Alec. ‘No doubt; but who knows or cares anything about them? They might be swept off the face of the earth to-morrow, and London would never miss them.’ It occurred to Alec that the same thing might be said of a good many other social institutions in London, but he held his tongue.