“I fear not, sir.”

“A small book of rhymes may be had for half a crown.  Vers de Societe are a great assistance to a young man.  If you have the ladies on your side, it does not matter whom you have against you.  You must learn to open a door, to enter a room, to present a snuff-box, raising the lid with the forefinger of the hand in which you hold it.  You must acquire the bow for a man, with its necessary touch of dignity, and that for a lady, which cannot be too humble, and should still contain the least suspicion of abandon.  You must cultivate a manner with women which shall be deprecating and yet audacious.  Have you any eccentricity?”

It made me laugh, the easy way in which he asked the question, as if it were a most natural thing to possess.

“You have a pleasant, catching laugh, at all events,” said he.  “But an eccentricity is very bon ton at present, and if you feel any leaning towards one, I should certainly advise you to let it run its course.  Petersham would have remained a mere peer all his life had it not come out that he had a snuff-box for every day in the year, and that he had caught cold through a mistake of his valet, who sent him out on a bitter winter day with a thin Sevres china box instead of a thick tortoiseshell.  That brought him out of the ruck, you see, and people remember him.  Even some small characteristic, such as having an apricot tart on your sideboard all the year round, or putting your candle out at night by stuffing it under your pillow, serves to separate you from your neighbour.  In my own case, it is my precise judgment upon matter of dress and decorum which has placed me where I am.  I do not profess to follow a law.  I set one.  For example, I am taking you to-day to see the Prince in a nankeen vest.  What do you think will be the consequence of that?”

My fears told me that it might be my own very great discomfiture, but I did not say so.

“Why, the night coach will carry the news to London.  It will be in Brookes’s and White’s to-morrow morning.  Within, a week St. James’s Street and the Mall will be full of nankeen waistcoats.  A most painful incident happened to me once.  My cravat came undone in the street, and I actually walked from Carlton House to Watier’s in Bruton Street with the two ends hanging loose.  Do you suppose it shook my position?  The same evening there were dozens of young bloods walking the streets of London with their cravats loose.  If I had not rearranged mine there would not be one tied in the whole kingdom now, and a great art would have been prematurely lost.  You have not yet began to practise it?”

I confessed that I had not.

“You should begin now in your youth.  I will myself teach you the coup d’archet.  By using a few hours in each day, which would otherwise be wasted, you may hope to have excellent cravats in middle life.  The whole knack lies in pointing your chin to the sky, and then arranging your folds by the gradual descent of your lower jaw.”