He would assist even in smoothing little difficulties as to the settling of card accounts, and had behaved with the greatest tenderness to the drawers of cheques whose bankers had harshly declared them to have 'no effects.' Herr Vossner was a jewel, and the Beargarden was a success.

Perhaps no young man about town enjoyed the Beargarden more thoroughly than did Sir Felix Carbury.

The club was in the close vicinity of other clubs, in a small street turning out of St.James's Street, and piqued itself on its outward quietness and sobriety.

Why pay for stone-work for other people to look at;--why lay out money in marble pillars and cornices, seeing that you can neither eat such things, nor drink them, nor gamble with them?
But the Beargarden had the best wines--or thought that it had--and the easiest chairs, and two billiard-tables than which nothing more perfect had ever been made to stand upon legs.

Hither Sir Felix wended on that January afternoon as soon as he had his mother's cheque for L20 in his pocket.
He found his special friend, Dolly Longestaffe, standing on the steps with a cigar in his mouth, and gazing vacantly at the dull brick house opposite.