Why, Broadway at night----" He forgot his chop, and leaned forward on the table to pour forth his description.

The manservant, standing behind Mount Dunstan's chair, forgot himself also, thought he was a trained domestic whose duty it was to present dishes to the attention without any apparent mental processes.

Certainly it was not his business to listen, and gaze fascinated.

This he did, however, actually for the time unconscious of his breach of manners.

The very crudity of the language used, the oddly sounding, sometimes not easily translatable slang phrases, used as if they were a necessary part of any conversation--the blunt, uneducated bareness of figure--seemed to Penzance to make more roughly vivid the picture dashed off.