and look at the ladies in the carriages, and smoke and spit
refreshingly round about. Policeman X slouches along the pavement. It is
five o'clock, the noon in Pall Mall.

"Here's little Newcome coming," says Mr. Horace Fogey. "He and the
muffin-man generally make their appearance in public together."

"Dashed little prig," says Sir Thomas de Boots, "why the dash did they
ever let him in here? If I hadn't been in India, by dash--he should have
been blackballed twenty times over, by dash." Only Sir Thomas used words
far more terrific than dash, for this distinguished cavalry officer
swore very freely.

"He amuses me; he's such a mischievous little devil," says good-natured
Charley Heavyside.

"It takes very little to amuse you," remarks Fogey.

"You don't, Fogey," answers Charley. "I know every one of your demd old
stories, that are as old as my grandmother. How-dy-do, Barney?" (Enter
Barnes Newcome.) "How are the Three per Cents, you little beggar? I wish
you'd do me a bit of stiff; and just tell your father, if I may overdraw
my account I'll vote with him--hanged if I don't."

Barnes orders absinthe-and-water, and drinks: Heavyside resuming his
elegant raillery. "I say, Barney, your name's Barney, and you're a
banker. You must be a little Jew, hey? Vell, how mosh vill you to my
little pill for?"

"Do hee-haw in the House of Commons, Heavyside," says the young man with
a languid air. "That's your place: you're returned for it." (Captain the
Honourable Charles Heavyside is a member of the legislature, and eminent
in the House for asinine imitations which delight his own, and confuse
the other party.) "Don't bray here. I hate the shop out of shop hours."

"Dash the little puppy," growls Sir de Boots, swelling in his waistband.

"What do they say about the Russians in the City?" says Horace Fogey,
who has been in the diplomatic service. "Has the fleet left Cronstadt,
or has it not?"

"How should I know?" asks Barney. "Ain't it all in the evening paper?"

"That is very uncomfortable news from India, General," resumes
Fogey--"there's Lady Doddington's carriage, how well she looks--that
movement of Runjeet-Singh on Peshawur: that fleet on the Irrawaddy. It
looks doocid queer, let me tell you, and Penguin is not the man to be
Governor-General of India in a time of difficulty."

"And Hustler's not the man to be Commander-in-Chief: dashder old fool
never lived: a dashed old psalm-singing, blundering old woman," says