gets quite a bore. Everybody you dine with has a good cook, and gives
you a dozen different wines, all perfect. We cannot bear this any
longer; all the lights and shadows of life are lost. The only good thing
I heard this year was an ancient gentlewoman going up to Gunter and
asking him for 'the receipt for that white stuff,' pointing to his Roman
punch. I, who am a great man for receipts, gave it her immediately: 'One
hod of mortar to one bottle of Noyau.'"

"And did she thank you?"

"Thank me! ay, truly; and pushed a card into my hand, so thick and sharp
that it cut through my glove. I wore my arm in a sling for a month
afterwards,"

"And what was the card?"

"Oh, you need not look so arch. The old lady was not even a faithless
duenna. It was an invitation to an assembly, or something of the kind,
at a place, somewhere, as Theodore Hook or Mr. Croker would say,
'between Mesopotamia and Russell Square.'"

"Pray, Mr. Grey, is it true that all the houses in Russell Square are
tenantless?"

"Quite true; the Marquess of Tavistock has given up the county in
consequence. A perfect shame, is it not? Let us write it up."

"An admirable plan! but we will take the houses first, at a pepper-corn
rent."