Eames saw it, and could
hardly refrain from laughing. When, at half-past nine o'clock, the
colonel retired from the room, the earl, as the door was closed,
threw up his hands, and uttered the one word "negus!" Then Eames took
heart of grace and had his laughter out.
The dinner was very dull, and before the colonel went to bed Johnny
regretted that he had been induced to dine at Pawkins's. It might be
a very fine thing to be asked to dinner with an earl; and John Eames
had perhaps received at his office some little accession of dignity
from the circumstance, of which he had been not unpleasantly aware;
but, as he sat at the table, on which there were four or five apples
and a plate of dried nuts, looking at the earl, as he endeavoured to
keep his eyes open, and at the colonel, to whom it seemed absolutely
a matter of indifference whether his companions were asleep or awake,
he confessed to himself that the price he was paying was almost too
dear. Mrs Roper's tea-table was not pleasant to him, but even that
would have been preferable to the black dinginess of Pawkins's
mahogany, with the company of two tired old men, with whom he seemed
to have no mutual subject of conversation.
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