Rubadub keep the house in
Hill Street, do you know?'

I didn't know, but I said, 'I believe she does,' at a venture; and,
looking down to the drawing-room table, saw the inevitable, abominable,
maniacal, absurd, disgusting 'Peerage' open on the table, interleaved
with annotations, and open at the article 'Snobbington.'

'Dinner is served,' says Stripes, flinging open the door; and I gave
Mrs. Major Ponto my arm.

CHAPTER XXV--A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

Of the dinner to which we now sat down, I am not going to be a severe
critic. The mahogany I hold to be inviolable; but this I will say, that
I prefer sherry to marsala when I can get it, and the latter was the
wine of which I have no doubt I heard the 'cloop' just before dinner.
Nor was it particularly good of its kind; however, Mrs. Major Ponto did
not evidently know the difference, for she called the liquor Amontillado
during the whole of the repast, and drank but half a glass of it,
leaving the rest for the Major and his guest.

Stripes was in the livery of the Ponto family--a thought shabby, but
gorgeous in the extreme--lots of magnificent worsted lace, and livery
buttons of a very notable size. The honest fellow's hands, I remarked,
were very large and black; and a fine odour of the stable was wafted
about the room as he moved to and fro in his ministration. I should have
preferred a clean maidservant, but the sensations of Londoners are too
acute perhaps on these subjects; and a faithful John, after all, IS more
genteel.

From the circumstance of the dinner being composed of pig's-head
mock-turtle soup, of pig's fry and roast ribs of pork, I am led to
imagine that one of Ponto's black Hampshires had been sacrificed a short
time previous to my visit. It was an excellent and comfortable repast;
only there WAS rather a sameness in it, certainly. I made a similar
remark the next day'.

During the dinner Mrs. Ponto asked me many questions regarding the
nobility, my relatives. 'When Lady Angelina Skeggs would come out;
and if the countess her mamma' (this was said with much archness and
he-he-ing) 'still wore that extraordinary purple hair-dye?' 'Whether my
Lord Guttlebury kept, besides his French chef, and an English cordonbleu
for the roasts, an Italian for the confectionery?'

'Who attended at Lady Clapperclaw's conversazioni?' and 'whether Sir
John Champignon's "Thursday Mornings" were pleasant?' 'Was it true that
Lady Carabas, wanting to pawn her d