It irritated me that they should thrust and parry over my shoulder, as if
I had been but a boy instead of full three months past my legal majority.
Besides, I had no mind to have them letting each other's blood on my
account.

"Rat it, 'tis your play, Volney. You keep us waiting," I cried.

"You're in a devilish hurry to be quit of your shekels," laughed the
Irishman O'Sullivan, who sat across the table from me. "Isn't there a
proverb, Mr. Montagu, about a--a careless gentleman and his money going
different ways, begad? Don't keep him waiting any longer than need be,
Volney."

There is this to be said for the Macaronis, that they plucked their pigeon
with the most graceful negligence in the world. They might live by their
wits, but they knew how to wear always the jauntiest indifference of
manner. Out came the feathers with a sure hand, the while they exchanged
choice _bon mots_ and racy scandal. Hazard was the game we played and I,
Kenneth Montagu, was cast for the role of the pigeon. Against these old
gamesters I had no chance even if the play had been fair, and my head on
it more than one of them rooked me from start to finish. I was with a vast
deal of good company, half of whom were rogues and blacklegs.

"Heard George Selwyn's latest?"[1] inquired Lord Chesterfield languidly.

"Not I. Threes, devil take it!" cried O'Sullivan in a pet.

"Tell it, Horry. It's your story," drawled the fourth Earl of
Chesterfield.

"Faith, and that's soon done," answered Walpole. "George and I were taking
the air down the Mall arm in arm yesterday just after the fellow Fox was
hanged for cutting purses, and up comes our Fox to quiz George. Says he,
knowing Selwyn's penchant for horrors, 'George, were you at the execution
of my namesake?' Selwyn looks him over in his droll way from head to foot
and says, 'Lard, no! I never attend rehearsals, Fox.'"

"'Tis the first he has missed for years then. Selwyn is as regular as Jack
Ketch himself. Your throw, Montagu," put in O'Sullivan.

"Seven's the main, and by the glove of Helen I crab. Saw ever man such
cursed luck?" I cried.

"'Tis vile. Luck's mauling you fearfully to-night," agreed Volney
languidly. Then, apropos of the hanging, "Ketch turned off that fellow Dr.
Dodd too. There was a shower, and the prison chaplain held an umbrella
over Dodd's head. Gilly Williams said it wasn't necessary, as the Doctor
was going to a place where he might be easily dried."

"Egad, 'tis his