“Very,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, slowly; and taking a brown armchair, he planted it with great deliberation where he faced the fireplace, and sat down. Let’s see—how did that speech begin? “Very pleasant roads about here,” said the fair young man with the white tie. “Very,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, eyeing him darkly. Have to begin somehow. “The roads about here are all right, and the weather about here is all right, but what I’ve come in here to say is—there’s some damned unpleasant people—damned unpleasant people!” “Oh!” said the young man with the gaiters, apparently making a mental inventory of his pearl buttons as he spoke. “How’s that?” Mr. Hoopdriver put his hands on his knees and stuck out his elbows with extreme angularity. In his heart he was raving at his idiotic folly at thus bearding these lions,—indisputably they _were_ lions,—but he had to go through with it now. Heaven send, his breath, which was already getting a trifle spasmodic, did not suddenly give out. He fixed his eye on the face of the fat man with the chins, and spoke in a low, impressive voice. “I came here, sir,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, and paused to inflate his cheeks, “with a lady.” “Very nice lady,” said the man with the gaiters, putting his head on one side to admire a pearl button that had been hiding behind the curvature of his calf. “Very nice lady indeed.” “I came here,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, “with a lady.” “We saw you did, bless you,” said the fat man with the chins, in a curious wheezy voice. “I don’t see there’s anything so very extraordinary in that. One ’ud think we hadn’t eyes.” Mr. Hoopdriver coughed. “I came, here, sir—” “We’ve ’eard that,” said the little man with the beard, sharply and went off into an amiable chuckle. “We know it by ’art,” said the little man, elaborating the point. Mr. Hoopdriver temporarily lost his thread. He glared malignantly at the little man with the beard, and tried to recover his discourse. A pause. “You were saying,” said the fair young man with the white tie, speaking very politely, “that you came here with a lady.” “A lady,” meditated the gaiter gazer. The man in velveteen, who was looking from one speaker to another with keen, bright eyes, now laughed as though a point had been scored, and stimulated Mr. Hoopdriver to speak, by fixing him with an expectant regard. “Some dirty cad,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, proceeding with his discourse, and suddenly growing extremely fierce, “made a remark as we went by this door.” “Steady on!” said the old gentleman with many chins. “Steady on! Don’t you go a-calling us names, please.”