Free The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope

their fellows would want a club. There were to be no morning papers taken, no library, no morning-room. Dining-rooms, billiard-rooms, and card-rooms would suffice for the Beargarden. Everything was to be provided by a purveyor, so that the club should be cheated only by one man. Everything was to be luxurious, but the luxuries were to be achieved at first cost 4 . It had been a happy thought, and the club was said to prosper. Herr Vossner, the purveyor, was a jewel, and so carried on affairs that there was no trouble about anything. He would assist even in smoothing little difficulties as to the settling of card accounts, and had behaved with the greatest tenderness to the drawers of cheques whose bankers had harshly declared them to have ‘no effects.’ Herr Vossner was a jewel, and the Beargarden was a success. Perhaps no young man about town enjoyed the Beargarden more thoroughly than did Sir Felix Carbury. The club was in the close vicinity of other clubs, in a small street turning out of St James’s Street, and piqued itself on its outwardquietness and sobriety. Why pay for stone-work for other people to look at; – why lay out money in marble pillars and cornices, seeing that you can neither eat such things, nor drink them, nor gamble with them? But the Beargarden had the best wines – or thought that it had – and easiest chairs, and two billiard-tables than which nothing more perfect had ever been made to stand upon legs. Hither Sir Felix wended on that January afternoon as soon as he had his mother’s cheque for £20 in his pocket.
    He found his special friend, Dolly Longestaffe, standing on the steps with a cigar in his mouth, and gazing vacantly at the dull brick house opposite. ‘Going to dine here, Dolly?’ said Sir Felix.
    â€˜I suppose I shall, because it’s such a lot of trouble to go anywhere else. I’m engaged somewhere, I know; but I’m not up to getting home and dressing. By George! I don’t know how fellows do that kind of thing. I can’t.’
    â€˜Going to hunt to-morrow?’
    â€˜Well, yes; but I don’t suppose I shall. I was going to hunt every day last week, but my fellow never would get me up in time. I can’t tell why it is that things are done in such a beastly way. Why shouldn’t fellows begin to hunt at two or three, so that a fellow needn’t get up in the middle of the night?’
    â€˜Because one can’t ride by moonlight, Dolly.’
    â€˜It isn’t moonlight at three. At any rate I can’t get myself to Euston Square by nine. I don’t think that fellow of mine likes getting up himself. He says he comes in and wakes me, but I never remember it.’
    â€˜How many horses have you got at Leighton, Dolly?’
    â€˜How many? There were five, but I think that fellow down there sold one; but then I think he bought another. I know he did something.’
    â€˜Who rides them?’
    â€˜He does, I suppose. That is, of course, I ride them myself, only I so seldom get down. Somebody told me that Grasslough was riding two of them last week. I don’t think I ever told him he might. I think he tipped that fellow of mine; and I call that a low kind of thing to do. I’d ask him, only I know he’d say that I had lent them. Perhaps I did when I was tight, you know.’
    â€˜You and Grasslough were never pals.’
    â€˜I don’t like him a bit. He gives himself airs because he is a lord, and is devilish ill-natured. I don’t know why he should want to ride my horses.’
    â€˜To save his own.’
    â€˜He isn’t hard up. Why doesn’t he have his own horses? I’ll tell youwhat, Carbury, I’ve made up my mind to one thing, and, by Jove, I’ll stick to it. I never will lend a horse again to anybody. If fellows want horses let them buy them.’
    â€˜But some fellows haven’t got any money, Dolly.’
    â€˜Then they ought to go tick. I