you, sir: it fortifies you: and as for liking
it--gad! I remember the time when I didn't like claret. Times are
altered now, ha! ha! Mrs. Fantail, madam, I wish you a very good
morning. How is Fantail? He don't come to drink the water: so much the
worse for him."

To see Mrs. Fantail of an evening is to behold a magnificent sight.
She ought to be shown in a room by herself; and, indeed, would occupy
a moderate-sized one with her person and adornments. Marie Antoinette's
hoop is not bigger than Mrs. Fantail's flounces. Twenty men taking hands
(and, indeed, she likes to have at least that number about her) would
scarcely encompass her. Her chestnut ringlets spread out in a halo
round her face: she must want two or three coiffeurs to arrange that
prodigious head-dress; and then, when it is done, how can she endure
that extraordinary gown? Her travelling bandboxes must be as large as
omnibuses.

But see Mrs. Fantail in the morning, having taken in all sail: the
chestnut curls have disappeared, and two limp bands of brown hair border
her lean, sallow face; you see before you an ascetic, a nun, a woman
worn by mortifications, of a sad yellow aspect, drinking salts at the
well: a vision quite different from that rapturous one of the previous
night's ball-room. No wonder Fantail does not come out of a morning; he
had rather not see such a Rebecca at the well.

Lady Kicklebury came for some mornings pretty regularly, and was very
civil to Mr. Leader, and made Miss Fanny drink when his lordship took a
cup, and asked Lord Talboys and his tutor to dinner. But the tutor came,
and, blushing, brought an excuse from Talboys; and poor Milliken had not
a very pleasant evening after Mr. Baring Leader rose to go away.

But though the water was not good the sun was bright, the music cheery,
the landscape fresh and pleasant, and it was always amusing to see the
vast varieties of our human species that congregated at the Springs, and
trudged up and down the green allees. One of the gambling conspirators
of the roulette-table it was good to see here, in his private character,
drinking down pints of salts like any other sinner, having a homely
wife on his arm, and between them a poodle on which they lavished their
tenderest affection. You see these people care for other things besides
trumps; and are not always thinking about black and red:--as even ogres
are represented, in their histories, as of cruel natures, and licentious
appetites, an