And his packages really did contain brawn and beer (four bottles of the Pilsener); also bread and a slice of butter.  The visitors learnt that they had happened on a feast, a feast which Mr. Buckingham Smith had conceived and ordained, a feast to celebrate the triumph of Mr. Alfred Prince.  An etching by Mr. Prince had been bought by Vienna.  Mr. Buckingham Smith did not say that the etching had been bought by any particular gallery in Vienna.  He said ‘by Vienna,’ giving the idea that all Vienna, every man, woman, and child in that distant and enlightened city where etchings were truly understood, had combined for the possession of a work by Mr. Prince.  Mr. Buckingham Smith opined that soon every gallery in Europe would be purchasing examples of Alfred Prince.  He snatched from a side-table and showed the identical authentic letter from Vienna to Mr. Alfred Prince, with its official heading, foreign calligraphy, and stilted English.  The letter was very complimentary.

In George’s estimation Mr. Prince did not look the part of an etcher of continental renown.  He was a small, pale man, with a small brown beard, very shabby, and he was full of small nervous gestures.  He had the innocently-red nose which pertains to indigestion.  His trousers bagged horribly at the knees, and he wore indescribable slippers.  He said little, in an extremely quiet, weak voice.  His eyes, however, were lively and attractive.  He was old, probably at least thirty-five.  Mr. Buckingham Smith made a marked contrast to him.  Tall, with newish clothes, a powerful voice and decisive gestures, Mr. Buckingham Smith dominated, though he was younger than his friend.  He tried to please, and he mingled the grand seigneurial style with the abrupt.  It was he who played both the parlourmaid and the host.  He forced Marguerite to have some brawn, serving her with a vast portion; but he could not force her to take Pilsener.

“Now, Mr. Cannon,” he said, pouring beer into a glass with an up-and-down motion of the bottle so as to put a sparkling head on the beer.

“No, thank you,” said George decidedly.  “I won’t have beer.”

Mr. Buckingham Smith gazed at him challengingly out of his black eyes.  “Oh!  But you’ve got to,” he said.  It was as if he had said:  “I am generous.  I love to be hospitable, but I am not going to have my hospitality thwarted, and you needn’t think it.”

George accepted the beer and joined in the toasting of Mr. Alfred Prince’s health.

“Old chap!” Mr. Buckingham Smith greeted his chum, and then to George and Marguerite, informingly and seriously:  “One of the best.”

It was during the snack that Mr. Buckingham Smith began to display the etchings of Mr. Alfred Prince, massed in a portfolio.  He extolled them with his mouth half-full of brawn, or between two gulps of Pilsener.  They impressed George deeply—­they were so rich and dark and austere.

“Old Princey boy’s one of the finest etchers in Europe to-day, if you ask me,” said Mr. Buckingham Smith off-handedly, and with the air of stating the obvious.  And George thought that Mr. Prince was.  The etchings were not signed ‘Alfred Prince,’ but just ‘Prince,’ which was quietly imposing.  Everybody agreed that Vienna had chosen the best one.