h-goer ever came within
earshot of Mr. Pickard.

It was not to the Shepperton farmers only that Mr. Gilfil's society was
acceptable; he was a welcome guest at some of the best houses in that
part of the country. Old Sir Jasper Sitwell would have been glad to see
him every week; and if you had seen him conducting Lady Sitwell in to
dinner, or had heard him talking to her with quaint yet graceful
gallantry, you would have inferred that the earlier period of his life
had been passed in more stately society than could be found in
Shepperton, and that his slipshod chat and homely manners were but like
weather-stains on a fine old block of marble, allowing you still to see
here and there the fineness of the grain, and the delicacy of the
original tint. But in his later years these visits became a little too
troublesome to the old gentleman, and he was rarely to be found anywhere
of an evening beyond the bounds of his own parish--most frequently,
indeed, by the side of his own sitting-room fire, smoking his pipe, and
maintaining the pleasing antithesis of dryness and moisture by an
occasional sip of gin-and-water.

Here I am aware that I have run the risk of alienating all my refined
lady-readers, and utterly annihilating any curiosity they may have felt
to know the details of Mr. Gilfil's love-story. 'Gin-and-water! foh! you
may as well ask us to interest ourselves in the romance of a
tallow-chandler, who mingles the image of his beloved with short dips and
moulds.'

But in the first place, dear ladies, allow me to plead that
gin-and-water, like obesity, or baldness, or the gout, does not exclude a
vast amount of antecedent romance, any more than the neatly-executed
'fronts' which you may some day wear, will exclude your present
possession of less expensive braids. Alas, alas! we poor mortals are
often little better than wood-ashes--there is small sign of the sap, and
the leafy freshness, and the bursting buds that were once there; but
wherever we see wood-ashes, we know that all that early fullness of life
must have been. I, at least, hardly ever look at a bent old man, or a
wizened old woman, but I see also, with my mind's eye, that Past of which
they are the shrunken remnant, and the unfinished romance of rosy cheeks
and bright eyes seems sometimes of feeble interest and significance,
compared with that drama of hope and love which has long ago reached its
catastrophe, and left the poor soul, like a dim and dusty stage,