One of the guests had dropped it.

Nickie put it on in a waggish humour, and stood moralising as three pretty Spanish dancers, in charge of a toreador, passed in.
Nickie loved gaiety, waster and rapscallion as he was--sunshine, colour, flowers, beautiful women, life, music and laughter shook passions loose within him.

Another little kink in his brain might have made a poet of him, just as the smallest turn of chance might have made a deadbeat of almost any poet of parts.
Mr.Crips actually sighed over that vision of fair women, and longed to be that happy toreador.
"Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we, too, into the dust descend: Dust unto dust, and under dust to lie, Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and--sans End." The quotation had just escaped our hero lips when a young fellow garbed as Romeo, alighting from a hansom, dashed into him.
"By Jove, that was dooced awkward of me--yes, I beg your pardon, I'm sure.

Should have looked where I was going--what?
said Romeo.
"Not at all," answered Nickie politely.

"My fault in blocking the path.
My fault, entirely." "By Jo-o-ve!" gasped Romeo; "that's a stunnin' make-up, old chap--what?
Nevah saw a bettah, by gad." "Make-up ?" said Nicholas.