that she couldn't take a servant out of a house in which there
hadn't been a lady. The note had a P.S.: "It's a good job there
wasn't, sir, such a lady as some."

A week later he came to see me and told me he was "suited,"
committed to some highly respectable people--they were something
quite immense in the City--who lived on the Bayswater side of the
Park. "I daresay it will be rather poor, sir," he admitted; "but
I've seen the fireworks, haven't I, sir?--it can't be fireworks
EVERY night. After Mansfield Street there ain't much choice."
There was a certain amount, however, it seemed; for the following
year, calling one day on a country cousin, a lady of a certain age
who was spending a fortnight in town with some friends of her own,
a family unknown to me and resident in Chester Square, the door of
the house was opened, to my surprise and gratification, by
Brooksmith in person. When I came out I had some conversation with
him from which I gathered that he had found the large City people
too dull for endurance, and I guessed, though he didn't say it,
that he had found them vulgar as well. I don't know what judgement
he would have passed on his actual patrons if my relative hadn't
been their friend; but in view of that connexion he abstained from
comment.

None was necessary, however, for before the lady in question
brought her visit to a close they honoured me with an invitation to
dinner, which I accepted. There was a largeish party on the
occasion, but I confess I thought of Brooksmith rather more than of
the seated company. They required no depth of attention--they were
all referable to usual irredeemable inevitable types. It was the
world of cheerful commonplace and conscious gentility and