In silence they tore down from the wall Beauchamp's electoral Address--
flanked all its length with satirical pen and pencil comments and
sketches; and they consigned to flames the vast sheet of animated verses
relating to the FRENCH MARQUEES. A quarter-size chalk-drawing of a
slippered pantaloon having a duck on his shoulder, labelled to say
'Quack-quack,' and offering our nauseated Dame Britannia (or else it was
the widow Bevisham) a globe of a pill to swallow, crossed with the
consolatory and reassuring name of Shrapnel, they disposed of likewise.
And then they fled, chased forth either by the brilliancy of the
politically allusive epigrams profusely inscribed around them on the
walls, or by the atmosphere. Mrs. Lespel gave her orders for the walls
to be scraped, and said to Cecilia: 'A strange air to breathe, was it
not? The less men and women know of one another, the happier for them.
I knew my superstition was correct as a guide to me. I do so much wish
to respect men, and all my experience tells me the Turks know best how to
preserve it for us. Two men in this house would give their wives for
pipes, if it came to the choice. We might all go for a cellar of old
wine. After forty, men have married their habits, and wives are only an
item in the list, and not the most important.'

With the assistance of Mr. Stukely Culbrett, Mrs. Lespel prepared the
house and those of the company who were in the secret of affairs for the
arrival of Beauchamp. The ladies were curious to see him. The
gentlemen, not anticipating extreme amusement, were calm: for it is an
axiom in the world of buckskins and billiard-cues, that one man is very
like another; and so true is it with them, that they can in time teach it
to the fair sex. Friends of Cecil Baskelett predominated, and the
absence of so sprightly a fellow was regretted seriously; but he was
shooting with his uncle at Holdesbury, and they did not expect him before