one of our
cheap and common East End stuff. I might have had one for sixteen and
six in Cheapside, every whit as good; but when a young lad becomes vain,
and wants to be fashionable, you see he can't help being extravagant.

Our director, Mr. Brough, did not fail to hear of the haunch of venison
business, and my relationship with Lady Drum and the Right Honourable
Edmund Preston: only Abednego, who told him, said I was her Ladyship's
first cousin; and this made Brough think more of me, and no worse than
before.

Mr. B. was, as everybody knows, Member of Parliament for Rottenburgh; and
being considered one of the richest men in the City of London, used to
receive all the great people of the land at his villa at Fulham; and we
often read in the papers of the rare doings going on there.

Well, the pin certainly worked wonders: for not content merely with
making me a present of a ride in a countess's carriage, of a haunch of
venison and two baskets of fruit, and the dinner at Roundhand's above
described, my diamond had other honours in store for me, and procured me
the honour of an invitation to the house of our director, Mr. Brough.

Once a year, in June, that honourable gent gave a grand ball at his house
at Fulham; and by the accounts of the entertainment brought back by one
or two of our chaps who had been invited, it was one of the most
magnificent things to be seen about London. You saw Members of
Parliament there as thick as peas in July, lords and ladies without end.
There was everything and everybody of the tip-top sort; and I have heard
that Mr. Gunter, of Berkeley Square, supplied the ices, supper, and
footmen,--though of the latter Brough kept a plenty, but not enough to
serve the host of people who came to him. The party, it must be
remembered, was _Mrs_. Brough's party, not the gentleman's,--he being in
the Dissenting way, would scarcely sanction any entertainments of the
kind: but he told his City friends that his lady governed him in
everything; and it was generally observed that most of them would allow
their daughters to go to the ball if asked, on account of the immense
number of the nobility which our director assembled together: Mrs.
Roundhand, I know, for one, would have given one of her ears to go; but,
as I have said before, nothing would induce Brough to ask her.

Roundhand himself, and Gutch, nineteenth clerk, son of the brother of an
East Indian director, were the only two of our gents invi