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A tall, gray-whiskered old gentleman in uniform passed him none other than Antonia's friend, General Costanzi who was trying to retain all his dignity while beset by two frolicsome little creatures looking like the chorus in "Faust," who, suspended one on each of his arms, were trying to win from him a promise to take them to supper.
"Vladimir, I am not at home," she said solemnly, and the gray-haired, gray-whiskered functionary bowed in acknowledgment of the fact, which was far from evident. When he was gone she sat down to her desk and wrote to Dr. Claudius. She wrote rapidly in her large hand, and before long she had covered four pages of notepaper. Then she read it over, and tore it up.
A measured step was heard upon the stairs, and a moment later a stout, tall, gray-whiskered and solemnly respectable person was ushered into the room. His life history was written in his heavy features and pompous manner. From his spats to his gold-rimmed spectacles he was a Conservative, a churchman, a good citizen, orthodox and conventional to the last degree.
He looked so queer and so like a gray-whiskered dwarf or gnome that Sara was rather fascinated. He looked at her with his bright eyes, as if he were asking a question. He was evidently so doubtful that one of the child's queer thoughts came into her mind. "I dare say it is rather hard to be a rat," she mused. "Nobody likes you.
"Ah, Grognard!" said she, laughing, "thou art more vised to corn-brandy, with a clove of garlic in't, than to good curaçoa." "What, curaçoa! Mère Madou, hast got curaçoa there?" cried a gray-whiskered captain, as he turned on his saddle at the word. "Yes, mon capitaine, and such as no burgomaster ever drank better;" and she filled out a little glass, and presented it gracefully to him.
They did not greet him, and Felix set to work to study the visages of Justice. They impressed him, on the whole, more favorably than he had expected. The one to his extreme left, with a gray-whiskered face, was like a large and sleepy cat of mature age, who moved not, except to write a word now and then on the paper before him, or to hand back a document.
"Going to wot?" ses old Isaac, drawing 'imself up and looking very shocked. "A music-'all," ses Ginger, trying to keep 'is temper. "A music-'all," ses Isaac; "why, it's worse than a pub, Ginger. I should be a very poor friend o' yours if I let you go there I couldn't think of it." "Wot's it got to do with you, you gray-whiskered serpent?" screams Ginger, arf mad with rage.
She did not remember the precise sum, but it appeared that the German had worked it out to the fraction of a farthing. The gray-whiskered landowner smiled at the mention of the profits of Sviazhsky's famling, obviously aware how much gain his neighbor and marshal was likely to be making. "Possibly it does not pay," answered Sviazhsky.
He began walking up and down, looking with pleasure at the waiters. He particularly liked the way one gray-whiskered waiter, who showed his scorn for the other younger ones and was jeered at by them, was teaching them how to fold up napkins properly.
One could almost have believed, as her gray-whiskered second mate used to say of the old Duke of S-, that they knew the road to the Antipodes better than their own skippers, who, year in, year out, took them from London the place of captivity to some Australian port where, twenty-five years ago, though moored well and tight enough to the wooden wharves, they felt themselves no captives, but honoured guests.
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