The King of Fashion looked very small as he stood in the middle of an Aubusson rug, yet I think he never looked more truly a monarch than at this moment. Unfortunately there was nobody to see him as he stood in his little world of mirrours and engravings.

And what had upset his equanimity? Certainly not the following lines:

"Where R*****, gentlest, kindliest of Beaux,
To all the world an urbane presence shows:
Proclaims the tropick joys of China Tea,
And rules e'en Fashion with his polished sway.
At his approach the graceless ruffle shakes,
While every waistcoat in its buttons quakes;
Each conscious shoe more luminously shines,
And puckered breeches haste to smooth their lines."

Whatever the Curtain Rod thought of the subjects, to the Monarch he was always complimental.

"Intolerable! unpardonable!" cried the Beau, tapping his snuff-box so fiercely that some of the powder was spilled over the grey Angora cat which was purring against his gold-clocked stockings in the heart of a faded Aubusson rose. Octavia (the cat) sneezed assent. What had upset his equanimity? You shall take a short journey to find out, for I perceive a break in the weather and sweet April is in the West.

We will walk just so far as Curtain Garden, but, pray, do not turn into the Maze where the paths are atrociously damp. Alas, the rain is beginning again, but at the end of that long alley is a summer house, the abode of many Rococo Dryads, although 'tis haunted at present by amorous mortals, for I caught the glint of a buckle and a shimmer of chestnut ringlets.

It does not require King Œdipus to guess that those eyes which stare so into the heavens are the blue eyes of Phyllida, while any one would recognize in that smooth voice the careful enunciation of Mr. Francis Vernon.

He, like every one else that forenoon, was reading Curtain Polls severely lashed by a Curtain Rod. Perchance the following lines were they that lately enraged Mr. Horace Ripple:

"Now is it a hoyden, a hussy or Miss,
Who listens to love but refuses a kiss?
'Tis said every morning she flies to the Maze,
And buries her head from the Publick's low gaze
Of Love in a Maze, pretty charmer, beware,
For under the rose there are thorns ev'rywhere,
And if you should chance the wrong turning to take,
'Tis odds that you'll trip on a tall garden Rake.
The Cits, when you pass, point you out to their Belles,
You serve as a moral all over the Wells,
And Dowagers, drinking your health in green tea,
Express a faint hope that man will not betray."

"Those are pretty stanzas for a lover to read," said Vernon, who, to do him justice, did not seem very greatly perturbed by the insult.