"_I_ dine there?" said Mr. Eales, who would have dined with Beelzebub,
if sure of a good cook, and when he came away, would have painted his
host blacker than fate had made him.

"You might, you know, although you _do_ abuse him so," continued the
wag. "They say it's very pleasant. Clavering goes to sleep after
dinner; the Begum gets tipsy with cherry-brandy, and the young lady
sings songs to the young gentlemen. She sings well, don't she, Fo?"

"Slap up," said Fo. "I tell you what, Poyntz, she sings like a--
whatdyecallum--you know what I mean--like a mermaid, you know, but
that's not their name."

"I never heard a mermaid sing," Mr. Poyntz, the wag replied. "Who ever
heard a mermaid? Eales, you are an old fellow, did you?"

"Don't make a lark of me, hang it, Poyntz," said Foker, turning red,
and with tears almost in his eyes, "you know what I mean: it's those
what's-his-names--in Homer, you know. I never said I was a
good scholar."

"And nobody ever said it of you, my boy," Mr. Poyntz remarked, and
Foker striking spurs into his pony, cantered away down Rotten Row, his
mind agitated with various emotions, ambitions, mortifications. He
_was_ sorry that he had not been good at his books in early life--that
he might have cut out all those chaps who were about her, and who
talked the languages, and wrote poetry, and painted pictures in her
album, and--and that. "What am I," thought little Foker, "compared to
her? She's all soul, she is, and can write poetry or compose music, as
easy as I could drink a glass of beer. Beer?--damme, that's all I'm