So although Mrs. Leo Hunter
professed her perfect willingness to recite the ode again, her kind
and considerate friends wouldn't hear of it on any account; and
the refreshment room being thrown open, all the people who had
ever been there before, scrambled in with all possible despatch--
Mrs. Leo Hunter's usual course of proceedings being, to issue
cards for a hundred, and breakfast for fifty, or in other words to
feed only the very particular lions, and let the smaller animals
take care of themselves.
'Where is Mr. Pott?' said Mrs. Leo Hunter, as she placed the
aforesaid lions around her.
'Here I am,' said the editor, from the remotest end of the
room; far beyond all hope of food, unless something was done
for him by the hostess.
'Won't you come up here?'
'Oh, pray don't mind him,' said Mrs. Pott, in the most
obliging voice--'you give yourself a great deal of unnecessary
trouble, Mrs. Hunter. You'll do very well there, won't you--dear?'
'Certainly--love,' replied the unhappy Pott, with a grim smile.
Alas for the knout! The nervous arm that wielded it, with such a
gigantic force on public characters, was paralysed beneath the
glance of the imperious Mrs.
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