CHAPTER XXV
Mr. G. arrived, of course too late for dinner; but as it was some years since he had seen either soup or fish in their best and hottest state of culinary excellence, he was quite satisfied—made the slightest possible apology for sitting down to dinner in his travelling dress, and looked like a gentleman and a well-dressed man.
Fisherwick looked horrid: he was, from his sedentary habits, averse to an open carriage, even in the dog-days; and the afternoon had been wet and foggy, so he was chilly to the last degree; and he always turned bright yellow tipped with blue when the fresh country air blew for any length of time on his worn-out Downing-street frame. His hair contrived to collect more dust than the usual laws of capillary attraction warranted. His black neckcloth turned browner and hung looser than common black cravats; his coat was a dingy brown—and, altogether, he had the air of an exhausted ink-bottle. If he had been allowed his luncheon on the road, and gallons of hot soap and water on his arrival, he would have been quite another Fisherwick; but, as it was, he looked like "a very unwashed artificer" indeed; and till he arrived at his third glass of champagne, he was as depressed and as uncomfortable as it was possible for a Cabinet Minister's private secretary, né Fisherwick, to be. But then he revived, and resumed his usual habits of official affability and courteous incommunicativeness, and his little dry pleasantries flowed forth, playfully cloaking his inflexible discretion.
136
