called the liquor Amontillado during the whole of the repast, and drank but half a glass of it, leaving the rest for the Major and his guest.

   Stripes was in the livery of the Ponto family—a thought shabby, but gorgeous in the extreme—lots of magnificent worsted lace, and livery buttons of a very notable size. The honest fellow's hands, I remarked, were very large and black; and a fine odour of the stable was wafted about the room as he moved to and fro in his ministration. I should have preferred a clean maidservant, but the sensations of Londoners are too acute perhaps on these subjects; and a faithful John, after all, IS more genteel.

   From the circumstance of the dinner being composed of pig's-head mock-turtle soup, of pig's fry and roast ribs of pork, I am led to imagine that one of Ponto's black Hampshires had been sacrificed a short time previous to my visit. It was an excellent and comfortable repast; only there WAS rather a sameness in it, certainly. I made a similar remark the next day'.

   During the dinner Mrs. Ponto asked me many questions regarding the nobility, my relatives. 'When Lady Angelina Skeggs would come out; and if the countess her mamma' (this was said with much archness and he-he-ing) 'still wore that extraordinary purple hair-dye?' 'Whether my Lord Guttlebury kept, besides his French chef, and an English cordonbleu for the roasts, an Italian for the confectionery?'

   'Who attended at Lady Clapperclaw's conversazioni?' and 'whether Sir John Champignon's "Thursday Mornings" were pleasant?' 'Was it true that Lady Carabas, wanting to pawn her diamonds, found that they were paste, and that the Marquis had disposed of them beforehand?' 'How was it that Snuffin, the great tobacco-merchant, broke off the marriage which was on the tapis between him and their second daughter; and was it true that a mulatto lady came over from the Havanna and forbade the match?'

   'Upon my word, Madam,' I had begun, and was going on to say that I didn't know one word about all these matters which seemed so to interest Mrs. Major Ponto, when the Major, giving me a tread or stamp with his large foot under the table, said—'Come, come, Snob my boy, we are all tiled, you know. We KNOW you're one of the fashionable people about town: we saw your name at Lady Clapperclaw's SOIREES, and the Champignon breakfasts; and as for the Rubadubs, of course, as relations —-'

   'Oh, of course, I dine there twice a-week,' I said; and then I remembered that my cousin, Humphry Snob, of the Middle Temple, IS a great frequenter of genteel 

 Prev. P 78/144 next