tempt you, sir?" asked this social personage after a short
pause, and describing a semicircle with the point of his knife.

"I thank you, sir, but I have dined."

"What then? 'Break out into a second course of mischief,' as the Swan
recommends,--Swan of Avon, sir! No? 'Well, then, I charge you with this
cup of sack.' Are you going far, if I may take the liberty to ask?"

"To London."

"Oh!" said the traveller, while his young companion lifted his eyes; and
I was again struck with their remarkable penetration and brilliancy.

"London is the best place in the world for a lad of spirit. See life
there,--'glass of fashion and mould of form.' Fond of the play, sir?"

"I never saw one."

"Possible!" cried the gentleman, dropping the handle of his knife,
and bringing up the point horizontally; "then, young man," he added
solemnly, "you have,--but I won't say what you have to see. I won't
say,--no, not if you could cover this table with golden guineas, and
exclaim, with the generous ardor so engaging in youth, 'Mr. Peacock,
these are yours if you will only say what I have to see!'"

I laughed outright. May I be forgiven for the boast, but I had the
reputation at school of a pleasant laugh. The young man's face grew dark
at the sound; he pushed back his plate and sighed.

"Why," continued his friend, "my companion here, who, I suppose, is
about your own age, he could tell you what a play is,--he could tell
you what life is. He has viewed the mantiers of the town; 'perused the
traders,' as the Swan poetically remarks. Have you not, my lad, eh?"

Thus directly appealed to, the boy looked up with a smile of scorn on
his lips,--

"Yes, I know what life is, and I say that life, like poverty, has
strange bed-fellows. Ask me what life is now, and I say a melodrama; ask
me what it is twenty years hence, and I shall say--"

"A farce?" put in his comrade.

"No, a tragedy,--or comedy as Moliere wrote it."

"And how is that?" I asked, interested and somewhat surprised at the
tone of my contemporary.

"Where the play ends in the triumph of the wittiest rogue. My friend
here has no chance!"

"'Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley,' hem--yes, Hal Peacock may be witty,
but he is no rogue."

"This was not exactly my meaning," said the boy, dryly.

"'A fico for your meaning,' as the Swan says.--Hallo, you sir! Bully
Host, clear the table--fresh tumblers--hot water--sugar--lemon--and--The
bottle's out! Smoke, sir?" and Mr. Peacock