the butler born not made, and quitted the comfortable apartment with a
salaried, but soft, footstep.

It was a pleasant chamber, this drawing-room of Number One Thousand. It
spoke respectfully of the generations that were past and seemed serenely
certain of a comfortable future. There was no too modern uneasiness
about it, no trifling, gim-crack furniture constructed to catch the eye
and the angles of any one venturing to seek repose upon it, no unmeaning
rubbish of ornaments or hectic flummery of second-rate pictures. Above
the high oaken mantel-piece was a little pure bust in marble of the
Prophet when a small boy. To right and left were pretty miniatures in
golden frames of the Prophet's delightfully numerous grandmothers. Here
might be seen Mrs. Prothero, the great ship-builder's faithful wife, in
blue brocade, and Lady Camptown, who reigned at Bath, in grey tabinet
and diamond buckles, when Miss Jane Austen was writing her first
romance; Mrs. Susan Burlington, who knew Lord Byron--a remarkable
fact--and Lady Sophia Green, who knew her own mind, a fact still more
remarkable. The last-named lady wore black with a Roman nose, and the
combination was admirably convincing. Here might also be observed Mrs.
Stuefitt, Mistress of the Mazurka, and the Lady Jane Follington, of
whom George the Second had spoken openly in terms of approbation. She
affected plum colour and had eyes like sloes--the fashionable hue in
the neat-foot-and-pretty-ankle period. The flames of the fire twinkled
brightly over this battalion of deuced fine women, who were all, without
one exception, the grandmothers--in various degrees--of the Prophet.
When speaking of them, in the highest terms, he never differentiated
them by the adjectives great, or great-great. They were all kind and
condescending enough to be his grandmothers. For a man of his sensitive,
delicate and grateful disposition this was enough. He thought them all
quite perfect, and took them all under the protection of his soft and