these years himself, but, owing to the slipshod way his proposer, Jack
Herring, had gone to work, they had not known what they were doing in
keeping him out. Why! they had taken his son Jo at once, and he believed
the boy was still a member; he had received a letter dated from there
eight years ago.

He had not been near the 'Disunion' for months, and the house had
undergone the piebald decoration which people bestow on old houses and
old ships when anxious to sell them.

'Beastly colour, the smoking-room!' he thought. 'The dining-room is
good!'

Its gloomy chocolate, picked out with light green, took his fancy.

He ordered dinner, and sat down in the very corner, at the very table
perhaps! (things did not progress much at the 'Disunion,' a Club of
almost Radical principles) at which he and young Jolyon used to sit
twenty-five years ago, when he was taking the latter to Drury Lane,
during his holidays.

The boy had loved the theatre, and old Jolyon recalled how he used to
sit opposite, concealing his excitement under a careful but transparent
nonchalance.

He ordered himself, too, the very dinner the boy had always chosen-soup,
whitebait, cutlets, and a tart. Ah! if he were only opposite now!

The two had not met for fourteen years. And not for the first time
during those fourteen years old Jolyon wondered whether he had been a