luck for me as that Brooksmith should open the door. Mr. Offord,
the most agreeable, the most attaching of bachelors, was a retired
diplomatist, living on his pension and on something of his own over
and above; a good deal confined, by his infirmities, to his
fireside and delighted to be found there any afternoon in the year,
from five o'clock on, by such visitors as Brooksmith allowed to
come up. Brooksmith was his butler and his most intimate friend,
to whom we all stood, or I should say sat, in the same relation in
which the subject of the sovereign finds himself to the prime
minister. By having been for years, in foreign lands, the most
delightful Englishman any one had ever known, Mr. Offord had in my
opinion rendered signal service to his country. But I suppose he
had been too much liked--liked even by those who didn't like IT--so
that as people of that sort never get titles or dotations for the
horrid things they've NOT done, his principal reward was simply
that we went to see him.

Oh we went perpetually, and it was not our fault if he was not
overwhelmed with this particular honour. Any visitor who came once
came again; to come merely once was a slight nobody, I'm sure, had
ever put upon him. His circle therefore was essentially composed
of habitues, who were habitues for each other as well as for him,
as those of a happy salon should be. I remember vividly every
element of the place, down to the intensely Londonish look of the
grey opposite houses, in the gap of the white curtains of the high
windows, and the exact spot where, on a particular afternoon, I put
down my tea-cup for Brooksmith, lingering an instant, to gather it
up as if he were plucking a flower. Mr. Offord's drawing-room was
indeed Brooksmith's garden, his pruned and tended human parterre,
and if we all flourished there and grew well in our places it was