He appeared to be suffering from a profound sense of injury. For the first half of the meal he sat in gloomy silence. Towards the latter half he unbosomed himself to me apparently under the impression that I was one of his oldest friends.

‘What I mean to say,’ he said. ‘It isn’t. No, dear old chap, it isn’t-’

I omit the slight slurring together of the words.

‘I mean to say,’ he went on, ‘I ask you? I mean if you take a girl-well, I mean-butting in. Going round upsetting things. Not as though I’d ever said a word to her I shouldn’t have done. She’s not the sort. You know-Puritan fathers-the Mayflower-all that. Dash it-the girl’s straight. What I mean is-what was I saying?’ 

‘That it was hard lines,’ I said soothingly.

‘Well, dash it all, it is. Dash it, I had to borrow the money for this beano from my tailor. Very obliging chap, my tailor. I’ve owed him money for years. Makes a sort of bond between us. Nothing like a bond, is there, dear old fellow. You and I. You and I. Who the devil are you, by the way?’

‘My name is Hastings.’

‘You don’t say so. Now I could have sworn you were a chap called Spencer Jones. Dear old Spencer Jones. Met him at the Eton and Harrow and borrowed a fiver from him. What I say is one face is very like another face-that’s what I say. If we were a lot of Chinks we wouldn’t know each other apart.’

He shook his head sadly, then cheered up suddenly and drank off some more champagne.

‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘I’m not a damned nigger.’

This reflection seemed to cause him such elation that he presently made several remarks of a hopeful character.

‘Look on the bright side, my boy,’ he adjured me. ‘What I say is, look on the bright side. One of these days-when I’m seventy-five or so, I’m going to be a rich man. When my uncle dies. Then I can pay my tailor.’