They gathered in the colonnaded porch of the grey Federal house on Leonard Street, under a twinkling red lamp. Nathan Hackett had joined them in time for the coffee and brandy at Delmonico’s, and had silently tucked a five-dollar bill into Collis’s pocket. Apparently, Mr Rodgers had been to his dentist on Bond Street that morning and his usual gobbling had been slowed to a painful, measured mastication of every bite.

Red lights shone on almost every other house on Leonard Street, and the sidewalks were busy with opera-hatted, bewhiskered gentlemen, many of whom, like Collis and his friends, had walked over from Broadway to complete their evening’s entertainment at ‘ladies’ boardinghouses’. There were shouts and guffaws and drunken laughter, and down at the Broadway end of the street, a street musician was playing the banjo while a scraggly monkey hopped and danced on the end of a chain at his feet.

Henry Browne knocked at the ‘boardinghouse’ door, and after a while it was opened. The five friends trooped quietly inside, into a red-draped hallway decorated with plush wallpapers and furnished with rococo hallstands in a style that Collis called ‘early gin palace’. The door was closed and secured behind them, and their doorman, a tall Negro in a powdered wig and the uniform of an eighteenth-century flunky, offered to take their hats and their canes. From a doorway at the far end of the hall, also draped with tasselled curtains, they could hear flute and cello music, and a sudden spattering of applause.

‘I’m told this show is splendid,’ said Henry, taking out a pair of small spectacles from a blue velvet case and propping them on the bridge of his nose. ‘Just the thing after rosemaryed mutton and raspberry ices. Just the thing to put you in the mood.’

‘Who’s paying?’ asked Lewis.

‘My treat,’ said Collis. ‘For the performance, at least. Your lady is your own choice, and for her you can stump up for yourself.’

‘That’s only because you invariably choose the cheapest,’ Jack ribbed him.

Collis pulled a face. ‘I pay in other ways, I assure you. I had one devil of a hangover this morning, apart from all the other tribulations.’

Nathan said, ‘I bet you my five dollars back that I can pick an uglier girl than you.’

‘Done,’ said Collis, ‘although I’m damned if I know why.’

At that moment, the drapes over the far door parted and a young girl emerged, very pretty and delicate, with dark ringlets and made-up eyes, and wearing nothing more than a pale-blue Empire-style dress of sheerest lawn, through which it was possible to see a host of alluring curves and shadows. ‘My name is Gemima,’ she said, beckoning. ‘Would you come this way, gentlemen, and be seated?’

Henry winked. ‘What did I tell you? It looks all very toothsome indeed.’

Collis gave him a wry grin.