ither. We're always
paying! By the way, Mrs. Victor Radnor's dinner-table's a spectacle. Her
taste in flowers equals her lord's in wine. But age improves the wine
and spoils the flowers, you'll say. Maybe you're for arguing that lovely
women show us more of the flower than the grape, in relation to the
course of time. I pray you not to forget the terrible intoxicant she
is. We reconcile it, Mr. Carling, with the notion that the grape's
her spirit, the flower her body. Or is it the reverse? Perhaps an
intertwining. But look upon bouquets and clusters, and the idea of
woman springs up at once, proving she's composed of them. I was about
to remark, that with deference to the influence of Mrs. Burman's
legal adviser, an impenitent or penitent sinner's pastor, the Reverend
gentleman ministering to her spiritual needs, would presumptively
exercise it, in this instance, in a superior degree.'

Carling murmured: 'The Rev. Groseman Buttermore'; and did so for
something of a cover, to continue a run of internal reflections: as,
that he was assuredly listening to vinous talk in the streets by day;
which impression placed him on a decorous platform above the
amusing gentleman; to whom, however, he grew cordial, in recognizing
consequently, that his exuberant flow could hardly be a mask; and that
an indication here and there of a trap in his talk, must have been due
rather to excess of wariness, habitual in the mind of a long-headed man,
whose incorrigibly impulsive fits had necessarily to be rectified by a
vigilant dexterity.

'Buttermore!' ejaculated Fenellan: 'Groseman Buttermore! Mrs.
Victor's Father Confessor is the Rev. Septimus Barmby. Groseman
Buttermore--Septimus Barmby. Is there anything in names? Truly, unless
these clerical gentlemen take them up at the crossing of the roads
long after birth, the names would appear the active parts of them,
and themselves mere marching supports, like the bearers of street
placard-advertisements. Now, I know a Septimus Barmby, and you a
Groseman Buttermore, and beyond the fact that Reverend starts up before
their names without mention, I wager it's about all we do know of them.
They're Society's trusty rock-limpets, no doubt.'

'My respect for the cloth is extreme.' Carling's short cough prepared
the way for deductions. 'Between ourselves, they are men of the world.'

Fenellan eyed benevolently the worthy attorney, whose innermost imp
burst out periodically, like a Dutch clocksentry,