“The most agreeable man, so affable, so unaffected.” “Always listened to with such respect in the Upper House.”
“Splendid place, Treddleton,—eighteen hundred acres, they say, in the demesne,—such a deer-park too.” “And what a collection of Vandykes!” “The Duke has a very high opinion of his—”
“Income,—cannot be much under two hundred thousand, I should say.”
Such and such-like were the fragmentary comments upon one who, divested of so many claims upon the respect and gratitude of his country, had merely been pronounced a very well-bred and somewhat agreeable gentleman. To have refused sympathy with a feeling so general would have been to argue myself a member of the anti-corn law league, the repeal association, or some similarly minded institution; so that I joined in the grand chorus around, and manifested the happiness I experienced in common with the rest, that a lord had travelled in our company, and neither asked us to sit on the boiler nor on the top of the luggage, but actually spoke to us and interchanged sentiments, as though we were even intended by Providence for such communion. One little round-faced man with a smooth cheek, devoid of beard, a. pair of twinkling gray eyes, and a light brown wig, did not, however, contribute his suffrage to the measure thus triumphantly carried, but sat with a very peculiar kind of simper on his mouth, and with his head turned towards the window, as though to avoid observation. He, I say, said nothing, but there was that in the expression of his features that said, “I differ from you,” as palpably as though he had spoken it out in words.
The theme once started was not soon dismissed; each seemed to vie with his neighbor in his knowledge of the habits and opinions of the titled orders, and a number of pleasant little pointless stories were told of the nobility, which, if I could only remember and retail here, would show the amiable feeling they entertain for the happiness of all the world, and how glad they are when every one has enough to eat, and there is no “leader” in the “Times” about the distress in the manufacturing districts. The round-faced man eyed the speakers in turn, but never uttered a word; and it was plain that he was falling very low in the barometer of public opinion, from his incapacity to contribute a single noble anecdote, even though the hero should be only a Lord Mayor, when suddenly he said,—
“There was rather a queer sort of thing happened to me the last time I went the Nottingham circuit.”
“Oh, do you belong to that circuit?” said a thin-faced old man in spectacles. “Do you know Fitzroy Kelly?”
“Is he in the hardware line? There was a chap of that name travelled for Tingle and Crash; but he’s done up, I think. He forged a bill of exchange in Manchester, and is travelling now in another line of business.”
“I mean the eminent lawyer, sir,—I know nothing of bagmen.”
“They’re bagmen too,” replied the other, with a little chuckling laugh, “and pretty samples of honesty they hawk about with them, as I hear; but no offence, gentlemen,—I’m a CG. myself.”