You would never have suspected his connection with Mr.Rickman, the Junior Journalist, the obscure writer of brilliant paragraphs, a fellow destitute of reverence and decency and everything except consummate impudence, a disconcerting humour and a startling style.

But he was still more distantly related to Mr.Rickman the young man about town.
And that made four.

Besides these four there was a fifth, the serene and perfect intelligence, who from some height immeasurably far above them sat in judgement on them all.

But for his abnormal sense of humour he would have been a Mr.Rickman of the pure reason, no good at all.

As it was, he occasionally offered some reflection which was enjoyed but seldom acted upon.
And underneath these Mr.Rickmans, though inextricably, damnably one with them, was a certain apparently commonplace but amiable young man, who lived in a Bloomsbury boarding-house and dropped his aitches.