The General, having been found by a boy and brought down,
extended to his guests a hospitality which was none the
less urbane for the evidences of surprise with which it
was seasoned. He concealed so indifferently his inability
to account for Tavender, that the anxious Thorpe grew
annoyed with him, but happily Tavender's perceptions
were less subtle. He gazed about him in his dim-eyed
way with childlike interest, and babbled cheerfully over
his liquor. He had not been inside a London club before,
and his glimpse of the reading-room, where, isolated,
purple-faced, retired old Empire-makers sat snorting
in the silence, their gouty feet propped up on foot-rests,
their white brows scowling over the pages of French novels,
particularly impressed him. It was a new and halcyon
vision of the way to spend one's declining years.
And the big smoking-room--where the leather cushions were
so low and so soft, and the connection between the bells
and the waiters was so efficient--that was even better.
Thorpe presently made an excuse for taking Kervick apart.
"I brought this old jackass here for a purpose," he said
in low, gravely mandatory tones. "He thinks he's got
an appointment at 5:30 this afternoon--but he's wrong.
He hasn't. He's not going to have any appointment at
all--for a long time yet.
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