"What," replied his friend--"is he an ugly little cad with a turn-up nose, and yellow kid gloves, that gets lines every day from the doctor, and can't kick a football as high as his own head? Rather! I know him." It was impossible to go on much longer at this rate. The atmosphere was getting warm all round, and the storm evidently might break at any moment. Fortunately for them, the Urbans, of their own accord, averted the peril. "If you've done lunch," said Quin, "we'd better get to business. Our fellows go in for something besides tuck, don't they, Flitwick?" "Rather," said Flitwick; "we haven't got a Latin motto that won't parse, but we meet to improve our minds, not stuff our bodies. I vote Mr Quin takes the chair." "All serene," said Quin, perching himself on a hamper. "I now call upon Mr Brown iii. to read us his paper on 'Remains.'" This was the first mention of my old comrade. During the interchange of courtesies during lunch he had kept steadily silent, anxious, no doubt, to spare my feelings. But now his chance was come. It was reserved to him to show off the Urbans on their intellectual side. But before he could come to the front and clear his throat for action, Langrish had loudly called the Philosophers to order. "Now, you fellows," said he, "we have our programme to get through, and we are not going to give it up, even if our place of meeting was swarming with day idiots. Mr President, you had better lead off." Thus called upon, I loudly summoned Mr Philosopher Trimble to open the debate on the subject of "Beauty," venturing to add,-- "Some fellows, I've been told, discuss subjects they know nothing about, such as 'Remains,' and that sort of thing; but the Conversation Club makes a point of sticking to what they are familiar with, and that is why we speak to-day of Beauty." It would not be easy to give a verbatim report of the proceedings which followed, for each party was evidently more attentive to what fell from the other side than to what fell from its own. And each speaker was evidently less concerned to impress his friends than his enemies. But any one who had chanced to stand on the ridge above, half-way between the two parties, would have heard a medley somewhat of the following kind,-- "Gentlemen, in addressing you on the subject of remains--" "--I need hardly explain what we mean when we speak of beauty--" "--Remains are things dug up out of the earth where they--" "--make a great mistake in calling things people eat, beautiful. In fact--" "very few of them are to be found unless you know where they are, but--" "When we talk of a beautiful face we mean a face that is--" "--plastered over with mud and grime, and hardly recognisable till it is scraped clean, or--" "people differ very much about it--what one person thinks beautiful, another--" "generally digs for with spades and shovels, and may spend days--" "--trying to look less ugly than they really are--"