"The deuce, she did!" thought Mr Butler. Aloud he answered most politely, "I am honoured, Mr Duggs. Won't you sit down?"
First casting a wary eye upon a chair, Mr Duggs seated himself carefully on the edge of it.
"It is quite evident," thought Mr Bunker, "that he has spotted something wrong. I believe a bobby would have been safer after all."
He assumed the longest face he could draw, and remarked sententiously, "The weather has been unpleasantly cold of late, Mr Duggs."
He flattered himself that his guest seemed instantly more at his ease. Certainly he replied with as much cordiality as a man with such a dull eye could be supposed to display.
"It has, Mr Butler; in fact I have suffered from a chill for some weeks. Ahem!"
"Have something to drink," suggested Mr Bunker, sympathetically. "I'm trying a little whisky myself, as a cure for cold."
"I--ah--I am sorry. I do not touch spirits."
"I, on the contrary, am glad to hear it. Too few of our clergymen nowadays support the cause of temperance by example."
Mr Bunker felt a little natural pride in this happily expressed sentiment, but his visitor merely turned his cold eye on the whisky bottle, and breathed heavily.
"Confound him!" he thought; "I'll give him something to snort at if he is going to conduct himself like this."
Mr Duggs seemed to regard the cigar-box a little less unkindly than the whisky bottle; but after a careful look at it he replied, "I am afraid they seem a little too strong for me. I am a light smoker, Mr Butler."
"Really," smiled Mr Bunker; "so many virtues in one room reminds me of the virgins of Gomorrah."
"I beg your pardon? The what?" asked Mr Duggs, with a startled stare.
Mr Bunker suspected that he had made a slip in his biblical reminiscences, but he continued to smile imperturbably, and inquired with a perfect air of surprise, "Haven't you read the novel I referred to?"
Mr Duggs appeared a little relieved, but he answered blankly enough, "I--ah--have not. What is the book you refer to?"
"Oh, don't you know? To tell the truth, I forget the title. It's by a somewhat well-known lady writer of religious fiction. A Miss--her name escapes me at this moment."
In fact, as Mr Bunker had no idea how long his friend might be dwelling in the apartment immediately above him, he thought it more prudent to make no statement that could possibly be checked.