people do to the company of their betters. To name all the senators
with whom Clavering consorted, would be invidious. We may mention
only a few. There was Captain Raff, the honorable member for Epsom,
who retired after the last Goodwood races, having accepted, as Mr.
Hotspur, the whip of the party, said, a mission to the Levant; there
was Hustingson, the patriotic member for Islington, whose voice is
never heard now denunciating corruption, since his appointment to the
Governorship of Coventry Island; there was Bob Freeny, of the
Booterstown Freenys, who is a dead shot, and of whom we therefore wish
to speak with every respect; and of all these gentlemen, with whom in
the course of his professional duty Mr. Hotspur had to confer, there
was none for whom he had a more thorough contempt and dislike than for
Sir Francis Clavering, the representative of an ancient race, who had
sat for their own borough of Clavering time out of mind in the house.
"If that man is wanted for a division," Hotspur said, "ten to one he
is to be found in a hell. He was educated in the Fleet, and he has not
heard the end of Newgate yet, take my word for it. He'll muddle away
the Begum's fortune at thimble-rig, be caught picking pockets, and
finish on board the hulks." And if the high-born Hotspur, with such an
opinion of Clavering, could yet from professional reasons be civil to
him, why should not Major Pendennis also have reasons of his own for
being attentive to this unlucky gentleman?

"He has a very good cellar and a very good cook," the major said; "as
long as he is silent he is not offensive, and he very seldom speaks.
If he chooses to frequent gambling-tables, and lose his money to
blacklegs, what matters to me? Don't look too curiously into any man's
affairs, Pen, my boy; every fellow has some cupboard in his house,
begad, which he would not like you and me to peep into. Why should we
try, when the rest of the house is open to us? And a devilish good