“D—— the humbug,” muttered Barnes, who knew him perfectly well. “The fellow is always in the pulpit.”
The incumbent of Lady Whittlesea’s chapel smiled and bowed to him. “You do not recognise me, sir; I have had the honour of seeing you in your public capacity in the City, when I have called at the bank, the bearer of my brother-in-law’s generous——”
“Never mind that, Honeyman!” cried the Colonel.
“But I do mind, my dear Colonel,” answers Mr. Honeyman. “I should be a very bad man, and a very ungrateful brother, if I ever forgot your kindness.”
“For God’s sake leave my kindness alone.”
“He’ll never leave it alone as long as he can use it,” muttered Mr. Barnes in his teeth; and turning to his uncle, “May I take you home, sir? my cab is at the door, and I shall be glad to drive you.” But the Colonel said he must talk to his brother-in-law for a while, and Mr. Barnes, bowing very respectfully to him, slipped under a dowager’s arm in the doorway, and retreated silently downstairs.
Newcome was now thrown entirely upon the clergyman, and the latter described the personages present to the stranger, who was curious to know how the party was composed. Mrs. Newcome herself would have been pleased had she heard Honeyman’s discourse regarding her guests and herself. Charles Honeyman so spoke of most persons that you might fancy they were listening over his shoulder. Such an assemblage of learning, genius, and virtue, might well delight and astonish a stranger. “That lady in the red turban, with the handsome daughters, is Lady Budge, wife of the eminent judge of that name—everybody was astonished that he was not made Chief Justice, and elevated to the Peerage—the only objection (as I have heard confidentially) was on the part of a late sovereign, who said he never could consent to have a peer of the name of Budge. Her ladyship was of humble, I have heard even menial, station originally, but becomes her present rank, dispenses the most elegant hospitality at her mansion in Connaught Terrace, and is a pattern as a wife and a mother. The young man talking to her daughter is a young barrister, already becoming celebrated as a contributor to some of our principal reviews.”
“Who is that cavalry officer in a white waistcoat talking to the Jew with the beard?” asks the Colonel.
“He, he! That cavalry officer is another literary man of celebrity, and by profession an attorney. But he has quitted the law for the Muses, and it would appear that the Nine are never wooed except by gentlemen with mustachios.”
“Never wrote a verse in my life,” says the Colonel, laughing, and stroking his own.