poet. Cyril looked like a poet. He wore his hair over his collar at the
back, and below the collar-bone in front. And, moreover, he was a
poet--one of those who write for ages yet unborn. Besides, his poems
could be bought (of the publisher only; the railway bookstall men did
not understand them) beautifully bound; really beautifully bound in
white kid, with green ribbon--a very thin volume and very thin poetry.
Meddlesome persons have been known to state that Cyril Squyrt's father
kept a prosperous hot-sausage-and-mashed-potato shop in Leeds. But one
must not always believe all that one hears.

It appears that beneath the turf, or on it, all men are equal, so no one
could object to the presence of Billy Bale, the man, by Gad! who could
give you the straight tip on any race, and looked like it. We all know
Bale's livery stable, the same being Billy's father; but no matter.
Billy wears the best cut riding-breeches in the Park, and, let me tell
you, there are many folk in society with a smaller recommendation than
that.

Now, it is not our business to go round the rooms of the French Embassy
picking holes in the earthly robes of society's elect. Suffice it to say
that every one was there. Miss Kate Whyte, of course, who had made a
place in society and held it by the indecency of her language. Lady
Mealhead said she couldn't stand Kitty Whyte at any price. We are sorry
to use such a word as indecency in connection with a young person of the
gentler sex, but facts must sometimes be recognized. And it is a bare
fact that society tolerated, nay, encouraged, Kitty Whyte, because
society never knew, and always wanted to know, what she would say next.
She sailed so near to the unsteady breeze of decorum that the
safer-going craft hung breathlessly in her wake in the hope of an upset.