butler all waiting to receive her, with a French
governess and a lady's maid, the moment she got out of the cradle; and
I say again she's nothing but roast fowl and blamange, or perhaps a
breast slice of pheasant, for she's uncommon genteel. How different
from our boiled veals, and parsley and butters! I shall give warning
if we don't change soon."

"She's a beautiful young lady," said Mr Snipe; "but I thinks not half
so plump and jolly as our Miss Emily or Sophia."

"Plump! do you think you've got a sporting license, and are on the
look-out for a partridge? No; I tell you all the Pitskivers is low,
and old Pits is the worst of the lot."

"I used always to hear him called a great man at Miss Hendy's,"
replied Snipe; "no end of money, and a reg'lar tip-topper. I really
expected to see the queen very often drop in to supper."

"And meet all the tag-rag we have here! What would the queen care for
all them portrait-painters, and poets, and engineers, and writing
vagabonds, as old Pits is eternally feeding? The queen knows a mighty
sight better, and wouldn't ax any body to her table as had done
nothing but write books or paint picters. No; old Pits is the boy for
patronizing them there fellers; but mark ye, Snipe, he takes the wrong
chaps. If a man is to demean himself by axing a riff-raff of authors
to his house, let it be the big 'uns; I should not care to give a bit
of dinner to Dickens or Bulwer myself."

With this condescending confession of his interest in literature, the
gentleman in the shining garments looked down the street, as if he
expected some public approval of his praiseworthy sentiments.

Being disappointed in this natural expectation, he resolved to revenge
himself by severe observations on the passers-by; but the severity was
partly lost on the slow-minded Mr Snipe--being clothed in the peculiar
phraseology of his senior, in which it appeared that some particular
dish was placed as the representative of the individual attacked. Not
that Mr Daggles--for such was the philosophical footman's name--saw
any resemblance between his master, Mr Pitskiver, and a dish of boiled
mutton and turnips, or between the beautiful young lady opposite and
the breast of a pheasant; but that, to his finely constituted mind,
those dishes shadowed forth the relative degrees in aristocracy which
Mr Pitskiver and the young lady occupied. He had probably established
some one super-eminent article of food as a high "ideal" to w