I could not help being amused, though I heard the old lady out with feelings of real concern.  It was difficult to doubt her with the father and son before me.  What I might have thought of them without the old lady’s account, or what I might have thought of the old lady’s account without them, I cannot say.  There was a fitness of things in the whole that carried conviction with it.

My eyes were yet wandering, from young Mr. Turveydrop working so hard, to old Mr. Turveydrop deporting himself so beautifully, when the latter came ambling up to me and entered into conversation.

He asked me, first of all, whether I conferred a charm and a distinction on London by residing in it?  I did not think it necessary to reply that I was perfectly aware I should not do that, in any case, but merely told him where I did reside.

“A lady so graceful and accomplished,” he said, kissing his right glove and afterwards extending it towards the pupils, “will look leniently on the deficiencies here.  We do our best to polish—­ polish—­polish!”

He sat down beside me, taking some pains to sit on the form, I thought, in imitation of the print of his illustrious model on the sofa.  And really he did look very like it.

“To polish—­polish—­polish!” he repeated, taking a pinch of snuff and gently fluttering his fingers.  “But we are not, if I may say so to one formed to be graceful both by Nature and Art—­” with the high-shouldered bow, which it seemed impossible for him to make without lifting up his eyebrows and shutting his eyes “—­we are not what we used to be in point of deportment.”

“Are we not, sir?” said I.

“We have degenerated,” he returned, shaking his head, which he could do to a very limited extent in his cravat.  “A levelling age is not favourable to deportment.  It develops vulgarity.  Perhaps I speak with some little partiality.  It may not be for me to say that I have been called, for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop, or that his Royal Highness the Prince Regent did me the honour to inquire, on my removing my hat as he drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that fine building), ’Who is he?  Who the devil is he?  Why don’t I know him?  Why hasn’t he thirty thousand a year?’ But these are little matters of anecdote—­the general property, ma’am—­ still repeated occasionally among the upper classes.”

“Indeed?” said I.

He replied with the high-shouldered bow.  “Where what is left among us of deportment,” he added, “still lingers.  England—­alas, my country!—­has degenerated very much, and is degenerating every day.  She has not many gentlemen left.  We are few.  I see nothing to succeed us but a race of weavers.”

“One might hope that the race of gentlemen would be perpetuated here,” said I.

“You are very good.”  He smiled with a high-shouldered bow again.  “You flatter me.  But, no—­no!  I have never been able to imbue my poor boy with that part of his art.  Heaven forbid that I should disparage my dear child, but he has—­no deportment.”