No hint of the club's immemorial history in that excessively modern and excellent repast--save in the Stilton cheese, which seemed to have descended from the fine fruity days of some Homeric age, a cheese that Ulysses might have inaugurated.

I need hardly say that the total effect on Priam's temperament was disastrous.

(Yet how could the diplomatic Mr.Oxford have guessed that Priam had never been in a club before ?) It induced in him a speechless anguish, and he would have paid a sum as gigantic as the club--he would have paid the very cheque in his pocket--never to have met Mr.Oxford.He was a far too sensitive man for a club, and his moods were incalculable.

Assuredly Mr.Oxford had miscalculated the result of his club on Priam's humour; he soon saw his error.
"Suppose we take coffee in the smoking-room ?" he said.
The populous smoking-room was the one part of the club where talking with a natural loudness was not a crime.

Mr.Oxford found a corner fairly free from midgets, and they established themselves in it, and liqueurs and cigars accompanied the coffee.