“So-so.”
“When I first saw you, I thought you the handsomest Petersham in town. Your velvet collar, cuffs, and side-pockets, were superb; and when you were the Colonel, upon my life you were the sweetest cut thing about the waist and tails I ever walked with.”
“You flatter me.”
“Upon my honour, no.”
“Well, I can return the compliment; for a blue, with chased buttons and silk lining, you beat anything I ever had the honour of meeting. But I suppose, as you are here, you are not the Cornet now?”
“Alas! no.”
“May I ask why?”
“Certainly. His scoundrel of a valet disgraced his master’s cloth and me at the same time. The villain went to the Lowther Arcade—took me with him by force. Fancy my agony; literally accessory to handing ices to milliners’ apprentices and staymakers; and when the wretch commenced quadrilling it, he dos-a-dos’d me up against a fat soap-boiler’s wife, in filthy three-turned-and-dyed common satin.”
“Scoundrel!”
“Rascal! But he was discovered—he reeled home drunk. I, that is, as it’s known, we make the men. The Cornet saw him, and thrashed him soundly with a three-foot Crowther.”