"I was remarking," he lisped, languidly, "that these good people here are—haw—very pleasant, and all that sort of thing; but have little of the—haw—the—haw——"
"What?"
"Oh—the odeur de la bonne société about them."
"The deuce!" said I, with some annoyance, for I was conscious that at our end of the table were really gathered the lions of my uncle's dinner party. "I hope you don't include our host in this—he represents the oldest line of baronets in Scotland."
"In Scotland—haw—very good," he drawled.
"Sir Nigel is my uncle," said I, pointedly.
"Yes, by the way, I crave pardon; so deuced stupid of me, when I know well that there are no such sticklers about precedence and dignity as your little baronets."
Coming from a conceited parvenu, the cool impudence of this remark was so amusing that I burst into a fit of laughter; and at that moment, by a singular coincidence, Sir Nigel, who had been engaged in an animated discussion, almost amounting to a dispute, with Spittal of Lickspittal, the M.P., now suddenly raised his voice, and without at all intending it, sent one random shot after another at my fashionable comrade.
"I can assure you, sir," he continued, "that such cosmopolitan views as yours, politically and socially, can never be endorsed by me. Thackeray says—and he says truly—that God has created no more offensive creature than a Scotch snob, and I quite agree with him. The chief aim of such is to be thought an Englishman (just as some Englishmen affect the foreigner), and a deplorable caricature he makes of the Englishman in language, bearing, and appearance. An English snob, in whatever his line may be, is, as Thackeray has shown us, a great and amusing original; but a Scotch snob is a poor and vile imitation, and like all counterfeits is easily discernible: Birmingham at once. I know no greater hot-bed of snobbery than our law-courts, sir, especially those of Edinburgh. Binns, pass the claret."
The M.P. bowed, and smiled deprecatingly, for he had long figured among the said courts as one who would joyfully have blacked the boots of the lord advocate or the ministry.