spoke of such, he called them "modest women." That virtue which, let
us hope they possessed, had not hitherto compensated to Mr. Foker for
the absence of more lively qualities which most of his own relatives
did not enjoy, and which he found in Mesdemoiselles, the ladies of the
theater. His mother, though good and tender, did not amuse her boy;
his cousins, the daughters of his maternal uncle, the respectable Earl
of Rosherville, wearied him beyond measure. One was blue, and a
geologist; one was a horsewoman, and smoked cigars; one was
exceedingly Low Church, and had the most heterodox views on religious
matters; at least, so the other said, who was herself of the very
Highest Church faction, and made the cupboard in her room into an
oratory, and fasted on every Friday in the year. Their paternal house
of Drummington, Foker could very seldom be got to visit. He swore he
had rather go to the tread-mill than stay there. He was not much
beloved by the inhabitants. Lord Erith, Lord Rosherville's heir,
considered his cousin a low person, of deplorably vulgar habits and
manners; while Foker, and with equal reason, voted Erith a prig and a
dullard, the nightcap of the House of Commons, the Speaker's
opprobrium, the dreariest of philanthropic spouters. Nor could George
Robert, Earl of Gravesend and Rosherville, ever forget that on one
evening when he condescended to play at billiards with his nephew,
that young gentleman poked his lordship in the side with his cue, and
said, "Well, old cock, I've seen many a bad stroke in my life, but I
never saw such a bad one as that there." He played the game out with
angelic sweetness of temper, for Harry was his guest as well as his
nephew; but he was nearly having a fit in the night; and he kept to
his own rooms until young Harry quitted Drummington on his return to
Oxbridge, where the interesting youth was finishing his education at
the time when the occurrence took place. It was an awful blow to the
venerable earl; the circumstance was never alluded to in the family: