Running the gauntlet Author:Edmund Hodgson Yates Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: the old, old story of London life, known to every one, and, mutatis nominibus, narrated of Bo many people. Tom's marriage, Dick's divorce, and Harry's going to t... more »he bad. Jack Considine left the service, and become sheep-farmer in Australia. Little Tim Stratum, of the Treasury, son of old Dr Stratum the geologist, marrying that big Indian widow woman, and becoming a heavy swell, with a house in Groavenor Square. Ned Walters dead,—fit of heart disease, or some infernal thing,—dead, by Jove ; and that pretty wife of his, and all those nice little children, gone— God knows where ! Lady Cecilia married ? Oh, yes ; and she and Townshend get on very well, they say; but that Italian chap, Di Varese, with the black beard and the tenor voice, always hanging about the house. Gertrude Netherby rapidly becoming an old woman, thin as a whipping-post, by George ! and general notion of nose-and-chinniness. Florence Sackville, as lovely and as jolly as ever, was asking after you only last night. These and a hundred other little bits of gossip about men in his old regiment, and women, reputable and disreputable, formerly of his acquaintance, of turf matters and club scandals, interspersed with such anecdotes, seasoned with gros sel, as circulate when the ladies have left the dinner-table, did Laurence Alsager listen to ; and when George Bertram stopped speaking and shut up his note-book, he found himself warmly complimented on his capital budget of news by his recently-arrived friend. " You've done admirably, old fellow," said Laurence. " Ton my oath I don't think there's hardly any one we know that you haven't had something pleasantly unpleasant to say about. Now," taking out his watch, " we must be off to the theatre, and we've just time to smoke a cigarette as we walk down there. You took the ...« less