Fanny liked Lord Alvanly of all things, and knew very little of Mr. Mitchel, except that he professed to be her very ardent admirer; yet her defence of the absent was ever made with all the warmth and energy her shyness would permit.
"Now, gentlemen," said Fanny, "have the goodness to listen to the facts as they really are."
Everybody was silent; for everybody delighted to hear Fanny talk.
"That little fat gentleman there," looking at Lord Alvanly, "whom you all suppose a mere idle, lazy man of genius, I am told studies bon mots all night in his bed." (A laugh.) "Further, I have been led to understand, that being much lower down in the class than Mitchel, though of the same age, his lordship in the year eighteen hundred and something or other was chosen, raised, and selected, for his civil behaviour, to the situation of prime and first fag to Mr. Mitchel, in which said department, his lordship distinguished himself much, by the very high polish he put upon Mr. J. Mitchel's boots and shoes."
There was not a word of truth in this story, the mere creation of Fanny's brain; yet still there was a probability about it, as they had been at school together, and which, added to Fanny's very pleasing, odd mode of expression, set the whole room in a roar of laughter. Alvanly was just as much amused as the rest; for Fanny's humour had no real severity in it at any time.
"But, Fanny, you will make a point of cutting this grocer, I hope?" observed Brummell, as soon as the laugh had a little subsided.
"Do pray, Fanny," said I, "cut your Mitchels. I vote for cutting all the grocers and valets who intrude themselves into good society."
"My father was a very superior valet," Brummell quickly observed, "and kept his place all his life, and that is more than Palmerston will do," he continued, observing Lord Palmerston, who was in the act of making his bow to Amy, having just looked in on her from Lady Castlereagh's.
"I don't want any of Lady Castlereagh's men," said Amy. "Let all those who prefer her Saturday-night to mine, stay with her."
"Who on earth," said Luttrell, with his usual earnestness—"who on earth would think of Lady Castlereagh when they might be here?"