Our young gentlemen have treated us nobly, and we will all
drink a parting bumper to Madam Esmond Warrington of Castlewood, in
Virginia. Suppose, boys, you were to find a tall, handsome stepfather
when you got home? Ladies as old as she have been known to marry before
now."

"To Madam Esmond Warrington, my old schoolfellow!" cries Mrs. Lambert.
"I shall write and tell her what a pretty supper her sons have given us:
and, Mr. George, I won't say how ill you behaved at the play!" And,
with this last toast, the company took leave; the General's coach and
servant, with a flambeau, being in waiting to carry his family home.

After such an entertainment as that which Mr. Warrington had given, what
could be more natural or proper than a visit from him to his guests,
to inquire how they had reached home and rested? Why, their coach might
have taken the open country behind Montague House, in the direction
of Oxford Road, and been waylaid by footpads in the fields. The ladies
might have caught cold or slept ill after the excitement of the tragedy.
In a word, there was no reason why he should make any excuse at all to
himself or them for visiting his kind friends; and he shut his books
early at the Sloane Museum, and perhaps thought, as he walked away
thence, that he remembered very little about what he had been reading.

Pray what is the meaning of this eagerness, this hesitation, this
pshaing and shilly-shallying, these doubts, this tremor as he knocks
at the door of Mr. Lambert's lodgings in Dean Street, and survey the
footman who comes to his summons? Does any young man read? does any
old one remember? does any wearied, worn, disappointed pulseless heart
recall the time of its full beat and early throbbing? It is ever so many
hundred years since some of us were young; and we forget, but do not all
forget. No, madam, we remember with advantages, as Shakspeare's Harry
promised his soldiers they should do if they survived Agincourt and
that day of St. Crispin. Worn old chargers turned out to grass, if the
trumpet sounds over the hedge, may we not kick up our old heels, and
gallop a minute or so about the paddock, till we are brought up roaring?
I do not care for clown and pantaloon now, and think the fairy ugly, and
her verses insufferable: but I like to see children at a pantomime. I
do not dance, or eat supper any more; but I like to watch Eugenio and
Flirtilla twirling round in a pretty waltz, or Lucinda and Ardentio
pullin