n the neighbourhood, and
his unabashed return, nursing the full tankard: had presently raised to
a high pitch the interest and indignation of the liveried servants of
the square. The disfavour of some of these gentlemen at first proceeded
to the length of insult; but Somerset knew how to be affable with any
class of men; and a few rude words merrily accepted, and a few glasses
amicably shared, gained for him the right of toleration.

The young man had embraced the art of Raphael, partly from a notion of
its ease, partly from an inborn distrust of offices. He scorned to bear
the yoke of any regular schooling; and proceeded to turn one half of the
dining-room into a studio for the reproduction of still life. There he
amassed a variety of objects, indiscriminately chosen from the kitchen,
the drawing-room, and the back garden; and there spent his days in
smiling assiduity. Meantime, the great bulk of empty building overhead
lay, like a load, upon his imagination. To hold so great a stake and to
do nothing, argued some defect of energy; and he at length determined to
act upon the hint given by Mrs. Luxmore herself, and to stick, with
wafers, in the window of the dining-room, a small hand-bill announcing
furnished lodgings. At half-past six of a fine July morning, he affixed
the bill, and went forth into the square to study the result. It seemed,
to his eye, promising and unpretentious; and he returned to the
drawing-room balcony to consider, over a studious pipe, the knotty
problem of how much he was to charge.

Thereupon he somewhat relaxed in his devotion to the art of painting.
Indeed, from that time forth, he would spend the best part of the day in
the front balcony, like the attentive angler poring on his float; and
the better to support the tedium, he would frequently console himself
with his clay pipe. On several occasions passers-by appeared to be
arrested by the ticket, and on several others ladies and gentlemen drove
to the very doorstep by the carriageful; but it appeared there was
something repulsive in the appearance of the house; for, with one
accord, they would cast but one look upward, and hastily resume their
onward progress, or direct the driver to proceed. Somerset had thus the
mortification of actually meeting the eye of a large number of
lodging-seekers; and though he hastened to withdraw his pipe, and to
compose his features to an air of invitation, he was never rewarded by
so much as an inquiry. "Can