on. The little ills
of life are the hardest to bear, as we all very well know. What would
the possession of a hundred thousand a year, or fame, and the applause
of one's countrymen, or the loveliest and best-beloved woman,--of
any glory, and happiness, or good-fortune avail to a gentleman, for
instance, who was allowed to enjoy them only with the condition of
wearing a shoe with a couple of nails or sharp pebbles inside it? All
fame and happiness would disappear, and plunge down that shoe. All life
would rankle round those little nails. I strove, by such philosophic
sedatives as confidants are wont to apply on these occasions, to soothe
my poor friend's anger and pain; and I dare say the little nails hurt
the patient just as much as before.

Clive pursued his lugubrious talk through the Park, and continued it as
far as the modest-furnished house which we then occupied in the Pimlico
region. It so happened that the Colonel and Mrs. Clive also called upon
us that day, and found this culprit in Laura's drawing-room, when they
entered it, descending out of that splendid barouche in which we have
already shown Mrs. Clive to the public.

"He has not been here for months before; nor have you Rosa; nor have
you, Colonel; though we have smothered our indignation, and been to dine
with you, and to call, ever so many times!" cries Laura.

The Colonel pleaded his business engagements; Rosa, that little woman of
the world, had a thousand calls to make, and who knows how much to
do? since she came out. She had been to fetch papa, at Bays's, and the
porter had told the Colonel that Mr. Clive and Mr. Pendennis had just
left the club together.

"Clive scarcely ever drives with me," says Rosa; "papa almost always
does."

"Rosey's is such a swell carriage, that I feel ashamed," says Clive.

"I don't understand you young men. I don't see why you need be ashamed
to go on the Course with your wife in her carriage, Clive," remarks the
Colonel.

"The Course! the Course is at Calcutta, papa!" cries Rosey. "We drive in
the Park."

"We have a park at Barrackpore too, my dear," says papa.

"And he calls his grooms saices! He said he was going to send away a
saice for being tipsy, and I did not know in the least what he could
mean, Laura!"

"Mr. Newcome! you must go and drive on the Course with Rosa now; and the
Colonel must sit and talk with me, whom he has not been to see for such
a long time." Clive presently went off in state by Ro