servants."

"The servants be hanged," said Sir Pitt; and his son thought even worse
would happen were they deprived of the benefit of his instruction.

"Why, hang it, Pitt!" said the father to his remonstrance. "You
wouldn't be such a flat as to let three thousand a year go out of the
family?"

"What is money compared to our souls, sir?" continued Mr. Crawley.

"You mean that the old lady won't leave the money to you?"--and who
knows but it was Mr. Crawley's meaning?

Old Miss Crawley was certainly one of the reprobate. She had a snug
little house in Park Lane, and, as she ate and drank a great deal too
much during the season in London, she went to Harrowgate or Cheltenham
for the summer. She was the most hospitable and jovial of old vestals,
and had been a beauty in her day, she said. (All old women were
beauties once, we very well know.) She was a bel esprit, and a dreadful
Radical for those days. She had been in France (where St. Just, they
say, inspired her with an unfortunate passion), and loved, ever after,
French novels, French cookery, and French wines. She read Voltaire,
and had Rousseau by heart; talked very lightly about divorce, and most
energetically of the rights of women. She had pictures of Mr. Fox in
every room in the house: when that statesman was in opposition, I am
not sure that she had not flung a main with him; and when he came into
office, she took great credit for bringing over to him Sir Pitt and his
colleague for Queen's Crawley, although Sir Pitt would have come over
himself, without any trouble on the honest lady's part. It is needless
to say that Sir Pitt was brought to change his views after the death of
the great Whig statesman.

This worthy old lady took a fancy to Rawdon Crawley when a boy, sent
him to Cambridge (in opposition to his brother at Oxford), and, when
the young man was requested by the authorities of the first-named
University to quit after a residence of two years, she bought him his
commission in the Life Guards Green.

A perfect and celebrated "blood," or dandy about town, was this young
officer. Boxing, rat-hunting, the fives court, and four-in-hand
driving were then the fashion of our British aristocracy; and he was an
adept in all these noble sciences. And though he belonged to the
household troops, who, as it was their duty to rally round the Prince
Regent, had not shown their valour in foreign service yet, Rawdon
Crawley had already (apropos of play, of