When the members spoke seriously they spoke like experts; otherwise they
were apt to joke very much like schoolboys let loose. The Right Hon.
Mr. M---- was not above twitting Lord S---- with gunroom stories, and
suffering in turn good-natured libel.
Of the two men lighting their pipes in the little room one was to the
first glance a remarkable figure. About the middle height, with a
square head and magnificent shoulders, he looked from the back not
unlike some professional strong man. But his face betrayed him, for it
was clearly the face of the intellectual worker, the man of character
and mind. His jaw was massive and broad, saved from hardness only by a
quaintly humorous mouth; he had, too, a pair of very sharp blue eyes
looking from under shaggy eyebrows. His age was scarcely beyond thirty,
but one would have put it ten years later, for there were lines on his
brow and threads of grey in his hair. His companion was slim and, to a
hasty glance, insignificant. He wore a peaked grey beard which
lengthened his long, thin face, and he had a nervous trick of drumming
always with his fingers on whatever piece of furniture was near. But if
you looked closer and marked the high brow, the keen eyes, and the very
resolute mouth, the thought of insignificance disappeared. He looked
not unlike a fighting Yankee colonel who had had a Puritan upbringing,
and the impression was aided by his simplicity in dress.
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