How are you ?" Mr.Guppy replying that he is not much to boast of, Mr.Jobling ventures on the question, "How is SHE ?" This Mr.Guppy resents as a liberty, retorting, "Jobling, there ARE chords in the human mind--" Jobling begs pardon.
"Any subject but that!" says Mr.Guppy with a gloomy enjoyment of his injury.

"For there ARE chords, Jobling--" Mr.Jobling begs pardon again.
During this short colloquy, the active Smallweed, who is of the dinner party, has written in legal characters on a slip of paper, "Return immediately." This notification to all whom it may concern, he inserts in the letter-box, and then putting on the tall hat at the angle of inclination at which Mr.Guppy wears his, informs his patron that they may now make themselves scarce.
Accordingly they betake themselves to a neighbouring dining-house, of the class known among its frequenters by the denomination slap-bang, where the waitress, a bouncing young female of forty, is supposed to have made some impression on the susceptible Smallweed, of whom it may be remarked that he is a weird changeling to whom years are nothing.

He stands precociously possessed of centuries of owlish wisdom.

If he ever lay in a cradle, it seems as if he must have lain there in a tail-coat.

He has an old, old eye, has Smallweed; and he drinks and smokes in a monkeyish way; and his neck is stiff in his collar; and he is never to be taken in; and he knows all about it, whatever it is.