Farewell, good youth, and keep your distance with those gentlemen you have just left.

They would like to spit you as a goose is spitted, but I would see you again ere that consummation be achieved!" He nodded to Tom, and took up his paper again; and Tom, turning round, encountered the amazed glance of Harry, who had come in to find him, and discovered him in friendly converse with the greatest man of all the company.
"How now, Tom! But you have a mettlesome spirit after all, if you can scrape acquaintance with Lord Claud.

I have been in his company many a time, but never a word has he vouchsafed to me.

And are you invited to his lodgings?
Surely my ears must have deceived me!" "In sooth he asked me, but it is only to hear a message I chance to bear from an old friend of his.

Harry, tell me who is this Lord Claud?
Men seem to worship the ground he treads upon, and yet to fear him, too, more than a little." It was after they had reached the streets again that Tom put this question, and Harry answered it by a knowing shake of the head.
"I should have the makings of a fortune in me," he answered, "if I could tell who Lord Claud was.