f Wellington in it. They have had a small cottage
at Walmer; and one day--the other day only--the old man met their little
daughter Lucy, a child about Mamey's age, near the garden; and having
kissed her, and asked her what was her name, and who and what her
parents were, tied a small silver medal round her neck with a bit of
pink ribbon, and asked the child to keep it in remembrance of him. There
is something good, and aged, and odd in it. Is there not?"

Another of his personal references was to Lord Grey, to whose style of
speaking and general character of mind he had always a strongly-expressed
dislike, drawn not impartially or quite justly from the days of reaction
that followed the reform debates, when the whig leader's least
attractive traits were presented to the young reporter. "He is a very
intelligent agreeable fellow, the said Watson by the bye" (he is
speaking of the member of the Lausanne circle with whom he established
friendliest after-intercourse); "he sat for Northamptonshire in the
reform bill time, and is high sheriff of his county and all the rest of
it; but has not the least nonsense about him, and is a thorough good
liberal. He has a charming wife, who draws well, and is making a sketch
of Rosemont for us that shall be yours in Paris." (It is already, by
permission of its present possessor, the reader's, and all the world's
who may take interest in the little doll's house of Lausanne which
lodged so illustrious a tenant.) "He was giving me some good
recollections of Lord Grey the other evening when we were playing at
battledore (old Lord Grey I mean), and of the constitutional
impossibility he and Lord Lansdowne and the rest laboured under, of ever
personally attaching a single young man, in all the excitement of that
exciting time, to the leaders of the party. It was quite a delight to
me, as I listened, to recall my own dislike of his style of speaking,
his fishy coldness, his uncongenial and unsympathetic politeness, and
his insufferable though most gentlemanly artificiality. The shape of his
head (I see it now) was misery to me, and weighed down my youth. . . ."

It was now the opening of the second week in August; and before he
finally addressed himself to the second number of _Dombey_, he had again
turned a lingering look in the direction of his Christmas book. "It
would be such a great relief to me to get that small story out of the
way." Wisely, however, again he refrained, and went on wit