faces out of
'White's,' and you see respectable grey-headed gentlemen waggling their
heads to each other through the plate-glass windows of 'Arthur's:' and
the red-coats wish to be Briareian, so as to hold all the gentlemen's
horses; and that wonderful red-coated royal porter is sunning himself
before Marlborough House;--at the noon of London time, you see a
light-yellow carriage with black horses, and a coachman in a tight
floss-silk wig, and two footmen in powder and white and yellow liveries,
and a large woman inside in shot-silk, a poodle, and a pink parasol,
which drives up to the gate of the Conflagrative, and the page goes
and says to Mr. Goldmore (who is perfectly aware of the fact, as he
is looking out of the windows with about forty other 'Conflagrative'
bucks), 'Your carriage, Sir.' G. wags his head. 'Remember, eight o'clock
precisely,' says he to Mulligatawney, the other East India Director;
and, ascending the carriage, plumps down by the side of Mrs. Goldmore
for a drive in the Park, and then home to Portland Place. As the
carriage whirls off, all the young bucks in the Club feel a secret
elation. It is a part of their establishment, as it were. That carriage
belongs to their Club, and their Club belongs to them. They follow the
equipage with interest; they eye it knowingly as they see it in the
Park. But halt! we are not come to the Club Snobs yet. O my brave Snobs,
what a flurry there will be among you when those papers appear!

Well, you may judge, from the above description, what sort of a man
Goldmore is. A dull and pompous Leadenhall Street Croesus, good-natured
withal, and affable--cruelly affable. 'Mr. Goldmore can never forget,'
his lady used to say, 'that it was Mrs. Gray's Grandfather who sent
him to India; and though that young woman has made the most imprudent
marriage in the world, and has left her station in society, her husband
seems an ingenious and laborious young man, and we shall do everything
in our power to be of use to him.' So they used to ask the Grays to
dinner twice or thrice in a season, when, by way of increasing the
kindness, Buff, the butler, is ordered to hire a fly to convey them to
and from Portland Place.

Of course I am much too good-natured a friend of both parties not to
tell Gray of Goldmore's opinion in him, and the nabob's astonishment
at the of the briefless barrister having any dinner at all. Indeed,
Goldmore's saying became a joke against Gray amongst us wags at