"Do you intend taking a box there, Mr. Titmouse?" inquired her Ladyship, with an appearance of interest in the expected answer.
"Why, your Ladyship, they say a box there is a precious long figure;—but in course, my Lady, when I've got to rights a little with my property—your Ladyship understands—I shall do the correct thing."
Here a very long pause ensued. How dismally quiet and deliberate was everything! The very servants, how noiselessly they waited! Everything done just when it was wanted, yet no hurry, or bustle, or noise; and they looked so composed—so much at their ease. He fancied that they had scarce anything else to do than look at him, and watch all his movements; which greatly embarrassed him, and he began to hate them. He tried hard to inspirit himself with a reflection upon his own suddenly acquired and really great personal importance; absolute master of Ten Thousand a-Year, a relation of the great man at whose table he sat, and whose hired servants they were; but then his timorously raised eye would light, for an instant, upon the splendid insignia of the earl; and he felt as oppressed as ever. What would he not have given for a few minutes' interval, and sense of complete freedom and independence? And were these to be his feelings ever hereafter? Was this the sort of tremulous apprehension of offence, and embarrassment as to his every move, to which he was to be doomed in high life? Oh that he had but been born to it, like the earl and the Lady Cecilia!
"Were you ever in the House of Lords, Mr. Titmouse?" inquired Lord Dreddlington, suddenly, after casting about for some little time for a topic on which he might converse with Titmouse.
"No, my Lord, never—should most uncommon like to see it, my Lord"—replied Titmouse, eagerly.
"Certainly, it is an impressive spectacle, sir, and well worth seeing," said the earl, solemnly.
"I suppose, my Lord, your Lordship goes there every day?"
"Why, sir, I believe I am pretty punctual in my attendance. I was there to-day, sir, till the House rose. Sir, I am of opinion that hereditary legislators—a practical anomaly in a free state like this—but one which has innumerable unperceived advantages to recommend it—Sir, our country expects at our hands, in discharge of so grave a trust—in short, if we were not to be true to—we who are in a peculiar sense the guardians of public liberty—if we were once to betray our trust—Let me trouble you sir, for a little of that——," said the earl, using some foreign word which Titmouse had never heard of before, and looking towards a delicately constructed fabric, as of compressed snow, which stood before Titmouse. A servant was in a twinkling beside him, with his Lordship's plate. Ah me! that I should have to relate so sad an event as presently occurred to Titmouse! He took a spoon; and, imagining the glistening fabric before him to be as solid as it looked, brought to bear upon it an adequate degree of force, even as if he had been going to scoop out a piece of Stilton cheese—and inserting his spoon at the summit of the snowy and deceitful structure, souse to the bottom went spoon, hand, coat-cuff, and all, and a very dismal noise evidenced that the dish on which the aforesaid spoon had descended, with so much force—was no longer a dish. It was, in fact, broken in halves, and the liquid from within, ran about on the cloth.... A cluster of servants was quickly around him.... A mist came over his eyes; the color deserted his cheek; and he had a strange feeling, as if verily the end of all things was at hand.
"I beg you will think nothing of it—for it really signifies nothing at all, Mr. Titmouse," said the earl, kindly, observing his agitation.