as Tacitus has said, doubtless with a prophetic eye to Bachelor Bill,
"the truth gains by delay,"--these reports began to die insensibly away;
and Bill now waxing near to the confines of middle age, his friends
comfortably settled for him that he would be Bachelor Bill all his life.
For the rest, he was an excellent fellow,--gave his broken victuals to
the poor, professed a liberal turn of thinking, and in all the quarrels
among the blowens (your crack blowens are a quarrelsome set!) always
took part with the weakest. Although Bill affected to be very select in
his company, he was never forgetful of his old friends; and Mrs. Margery
Lobkins having been very good to him when he was a little boy in a
skeleton jacket, he invariably sent her a card to his _soirees_. The
good lady, however, had not of late years deserted her chimney-corner.
Indeed, the racket of fashionable life was too much for her nerves; and
the invitation had become a customary form not expected to be acted
upon, but not a whit the less regularly used for that reason. As Paul
had now attained his sixteenth year, and was a fine, handsome lad, the
dame thought he would make an excellent representative of the Mug's
mistress; and that, for her _protege_, a ball at Bill's house would be
no bad commencement of "Life in London." Accordingly, she intimated to
the Bachelor a wish to that effect; and Paul received the following
invitation from Bill:--

"Mr. William Duke gives a hop and feed in a quiet way on Monday next, and
_hops_ Mr. Paul Lobkins will be of the party. N. B. Gentlemen is
expected to come in pumps."

When Paul entered, he found Bachelor Bill leading off the ball to the
tune of "Drops of Brandy," with a young lady to whom, because she had
been a strolling player, the Ladies Patronesses of Fiddler's Row had
thought proper to behave with a very cavalier civility. The good