“Cinqbars insisted upon helping her in.  Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone, the great Barnet from the North, who, great as he is, is as stewpid as a howl, looked on, hardly trusting his goggle I’s as they witnessed the sean.  But little lively good naterd Lady Kitty Quickset, who was going away with the Countiss, held her little & out of the carridge to me and said, ’Mr. De la Pluche, you are a much better man than I took you to be.  Though her Ladyship is horrified, & though your Grandmother did take gin for breakfast, don’t give her up.  No one ever came to harm yet for honoring their father & mother.’

“And this was a sort of consolation to me, and I observed that all the good fellers thought none the wuss of me.  Cinqbars said I was a trump for sticking up for the old washerwoman; Lord George Gills said she should have his linning; and so they cut their joax, and I let them.  But it was a great releaf to my mind when the cart drove hoff.

“There was one pint which my Grandmother observed, and which, I muss say, I thought lickwise:  ‘Ho, Jeames,’ says she, ’hall those fine ladies in sattns and velvets is very well, but there’s not one of em can hold a candle to Mary Hann.’”

“Railway Spec is going on phamusly.  You should see how polite they har at my bankers now!  Sir Paul Pump Aldgate, & Company.  They bow me out of the back parlor as if I was a Nybobb.  Every body says I’m worth half a millium.  The number of lines they’re putting me upon is inkumseavable.  I’ve put Fitzwarren, my man, upon several.  Reginald Fitzwarren, Esquire, looks splendid in a perspectus; and the raskle owns that he has made two thowsnd.

“How the ladies, & men too, foller and flatter me!  If I go into Lady Binsis hopra box, she makes room for me, who ever is there, and cries out, ‘O do make room for that dear creature!’ And she complyments me on my taste in musick, or my new Broom-oss, or the phansy of my weskit, and always ends by asking me for some shares.  Old Lord Bareacres, as stiff as a poaker, as prowd as loosyfer, as poor as Joab—­even he condysends to be sivvle to the great De la Pluche, and begged me at Harthur’s, lately, in his sollom, pompus way, ‘to faver him with five minutes’ conversation.’  I knew what was coming—­application for shares—­put him down on my private list.  Would’nt mind the Scrag End Junction passing through Bareacres—­hoped I’d come down and shoot there.

“I gave the old humbugg a few shares out of my own pocket.  ’There, old Pride,’ says I, ’I like to see you down on your knees to a footman.  There, old Pompossaty!  Take fifty pound; I like to see you come cringing and begging for it.’  Whenever I see him in a very public place, I take my change for my money.  I digg him in the ribbs, or slap his padded old shoulders.  I call him, ‘Bareacres, my old buck!’ and I see him wince.  It does my art good.