ANENCE.

And all this to show off the little lord, thinks I. All this in honour
of a stupid little cigarrified Cornet of dragoons, who can barely write
his name,--while an eminent and profound moralist like--somebody--is
fobbed off with cold mutton and relays of pig. Well, well: a martyrdom
of cold mutton is just bearable. I pardon Mrs. Ponto, from my heart I
do, especially as I wouldn't turn out of the best bed-room, in spite of
all her hints; but held my ground in the chintz tester, vowing that Lord
Gules, as a young man, was quite small and hardy enough to make himself
comfortable elsewhere.

The great Ponto party was a very august one. The Hawbucks came in their
family coach, with the blood-red band emblazoned all over it: and their
man in yellow livery waited in country fashion at table, only to be
exceeded in splendour by the Hipsleys, the opposition baronet, in light
blue. The old Ladies Fitzague drove over in their little old chariot
with the fat black horses, the fat coachman, the fat footman--(why
are dowagers' horses and footmen always fat?) And soon after these
personages had arrived, with their auburn fronts and red beaks and
turbans, came the Honourable and Reverend Lionel Pettipois, who with
General and Mrs. Sago formed the rest of the party. 'Lord and Lady
Frederick Howlet were asked, but they have friends at Ivybush,' Mrs.
Ponto told me; and that very morning, the Castlehaggards sent an excuse,
as her ladyship had a return of the quinsy. Between ourselves, Lady
Castlehaggard's quinsy always comes on when there is dinner at the
Evergreens.

If the keeping of polite company could make a woman happy, surely my
kind hostess Mrs. Ponto was on that day a happy woman. Every person
present (except the unlucky impostor who pretended to a connexion with
the Snobbington Family, and General Sago, who had brought home I don't
know how many lacs of rupees from India,) was related to the Peerage
or the Baronetage. Mrs. P. had her heart's desire. If she had been an
Earl's daughter herself could she have expected better company?--and her
family were in the oil-trade at Bristol, as all her friends very well
know.

What I complained of in my heart was not the dining--which, for this
once, was plentiful and comfortable enough--but the prodigious dulness
of the talking part of the entertainment. O my beloved brother Snobs of
the City, if we love each other no better than our country brethren, at
least we amuse each oth