'Now, Mortimer,' says Lady Tippins, rapping the sticks of her closed
green fan upon the knuckles of her left hand - which is particularly
rich in knuckles, 'I insist upon your telling all that is tobe told
about the man from Jamaica.'
'Give you my honour I never heard of any man from Jamaica, except
the man who was a brother,' replies Mortimer.
'Tobago, then.'
'Nor yet from Tobago.'
'Except,' Eugene strikes in: so unexpectedly that the mature young
lady, who has forgotten all about him, with a start takes the epaulette
out of his way: 'except our friend who long lived on rice-pudding and
isinglass, till at length to his something or other, his physician said
something else, and a leg of mutton somehow ended in daygo.'
A reviving impression goes round the table that Eugene is coming out.
An unfulfilled impression, for he goes in again.
(Penguin English Library edition, pp. 53-4.)
