Jones, it appeared, was the editor, or sub-editor, or co-editor, of some influential daily newspaper.  “He is a night bird, Harry—­” said Mrs. Burton.  She had fallen into the way of calling him Harry at once, but he could not on that occasion bring himself to call her Cecilia.  He might have done so had not her husband been present, but he was ashamed to do it before him.  “He is a night bird, Harry,” said she, speaking of her brother, “and flies away at nine o’clock that he may go and hoot like an owl in some dark city haunt that he has.  Then, when he is himself asleep at breakfast time, his hootings are being heard round the town.”

Harry rather liked the idea of knowing an editor.  Editors were, he thought, influential people, who had the world very much under their feet—­being, as he conceived, afraid of no men, while other men are very much afraid of them.  He was glad enough to shake Jones by the hand, when he found that Jones was an editor.  But Jones, though he had the face and forehead of a clever man, was very quiet, and seemed almost submissive to his sister and brother-in-law.

The dinner was plain, but good, and Harry after a while became happy and satisfied, although he had come to the house with something almost like a resolution to find fault.  Men, and women also, do frequently go about in such a mood, having unconscionably from some small circumstance, prejudged their acquaintances, and made up their mind that their acquaintances should be condemned.  Influenced in this way, Harry had not intended to pass a pleasant evening, and would have stood aloof and been cold, had it been possible to him; but he found that it was not possible; and after a little while he was friendly and joyous, and the dinner went off very well.  There was some wild fowl, and he was agreeably surprised as he watched the mental anxiety and gastronomic skill with which Burton went through the process of preparing the gravy, with lemon and pepper, having in the room a little silver pot, and an apparatus of fire for the occasion.  He would as soon have expected the Archbishop of Canterbury himself to go through such an operation in the dining-room at Lambeth as the hard-working man of business whom he had known in the chambers of the Adelphi.

“Does he always do that, Mrs. Burton?” Harry asked.

“Always,” said Burton, “when I get the materials.  One doesn’t bother oneself about a cold leg of mutton, you know, which is my usual dinner when we are alone.  The children have it hot in the middle of the day.”

“Such a thing never happened to him yet, Harry,” said Mrs. Burton.

“Gently with the pepper,” said the editor.  It was the first word he had spoken for some time.

“Be good enough to remember that, yourself, when you are writing your article to-night.”

“No, none for me, Theodore, said Mrs. Burton.

“Cissy!”

“I have dined really.  If I had remembered that you were going to display your cookery, I would have kept some of my energy, but I forgot it.”