"I feel like a
little work."
ONE HUNDRED IN THE DARK
They were discussing languidly, as such groups do, seeking from each
topic a peg on which to hang a few epigrams that might be retold in the
lip currency of the club--Steingall, the painter, florid of gesture and
effete, foreign in type, with black-rimmed glasses and trailing ribbon
of black silk that cut across his cropped beard and cavalry mustaches;
De Gollyer, a critic, who preferred to be known as a man about town,
short, feverish, incisive, who slew platitudes with one adjective and
tagged a reputation with three; Rankin, the architect, always in a
defensive explanatory attitude, who held his elbows on the table, his
hands before his long sliding nose, and gestured with his fingers;
Quinny, the illustrator, long and gaunt, with a predatory eloquence that
charged irresistibly down on any subject, cut it off, surrounded it, and
raked it with enfilading wit and satire; and Peters, whose methods of
existence were a mystery, a young man of fifty, who had done nothing and
who knew every one by his first name, the club postman, who carried the
tittle-tattle, the _bon mots_ and the news of the day, who drew up a
petition a week and pursued the house committee with a daily grievance.
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