There is a certain English young fellow-student of mine—to wit and videlicet, Howard Allbutt-Innett, Esquire, with whom I have succeeded in scratching an acquaintance at sundry Law Lectures, and in the Library of my Inn of Court—a most amiable tip-top young chap, who is "the moulded glass of fashionable form," and cap-in-hand with innumerable aristocratic nobs.
Seeing that I had (at an earlier period) been a more diligent attendant and note-taker of lectures than himself, he did pay me the transcendent compliment of borrowing the loan of my note-book, which, to my grateful astonishment, he condescended to bring back personally to Porticobello House, saying that he had found my notes magnificent, and totally incomprehensible to his more limited intellect!
In additum, he graciously accepted my invitation to ascend to the drawing-room, where I introduced him freely to several select lady boarders as my alter ego and Fidus Achates.
On taking his leave, he expressed some marvelling that I should have concealed my superior rank under the reticence of a napkin, having observed that I was addressed as "Prince" by more than one of the softer-sexed boarders.
I replied that I attached no valid importance to the nominis umbra of such a barren title, and that the contents of what there is nothing in must necessarily be naught.
He answered me warmly that he entirely joined issue with me in such an opinion, and that he was often affected to sickishness by the snobbery of mundane society, adding that he hoped I would give him the look up at his paternal mansion in Prince's Square, Bayswater, shortly, since his people would be overjoyed at making my acquaintance, which both enraptured and surprised me, for hitherto he had ridden the high and rough-shoed horse, and employed me to suck my brains as a cat's foot.
And odzookers! before many days I was the recipient of a silver-lettered missive, stating that Mr and Mrs Leofric Allbutt-Innett did request the honour of Prince Jabberjee's company at the marriage of their daughter, Clorinda Isabel, with Mr Overton Wood beigh-Smart, at a certain sacred Bayswater edifice.
This I eagerly accepted, perceiving that my friend must have eulogised to his parents my legal accomplishments and forensic acumen.