whose adventures on the day previous we had just been
talking--to Mr. Titmarsh, in fact; whom Preston, as Fanny vowed, had used
most cruelly, and to whom, she said, a reparation was due. So my Lady
Fanny insists upon our driving straight to my rooms in the Albany (you
know I am only to stay in my bachelor's quarters a month longer)--"

"Nonsense!" says Lady Fanny.

"--Insists upon driving straight to my chambers in the Albany, extracting
thence the above-named haunch--"

"Grandmamma was very sorry to part with it," cries Lady Fanny.

"--And then she orders us to proceed to Mr. Titmarsh's house in the City,
where the venison was left, in company with a couple of baskets of fruit
bought at Grange's by Lady Fanny herself."

"And what was more," said Lady Fanny, "I made Grandmamma go into Fr--into
Lord Tiptoff's rooms, and dictated out of my own mouth the letter which
he wrote, and pinned up the haunch of venison that his hideous old
housekeeper brought us--I am quite jealous of her--I pinned up the haunch
of venison in a copy of the John Bull newspaper."

It had one of the Ramsbottom letters in it, I remember, which Gus and I
read on Sunday at breakfast, and we nearly killed ourselves with
laughing. The ladies laughed too when I told them this; and good-natured
Lady Jane said she would forgive her sister, and hoped I would too: which
I promised to do as often as her Ladyship chose to repeat the offence.

I never had any more venison from the family; but I'll tell you _what_ I
had. About a month after came a card of "Lord and Lady Tiptoff," and a
great piece of plum-cake; of which, I am sorry to say, Gus ate a great
deal too much.

CHAPTER VI

OF THE WEST DIDDLESEX ASSOCIATION, AND OF THE EFFECT THE DIAMOND HAD
THERE

Well, the magic of the pin was not over yet. Very soon after Mrs.
Brough's grand party, our director called me up to his room at the West
Diddlesex, and after examining my accounts, and speaking awhile about
business, said, "That's a very fine diamond-pin, Master Titmarsh" (he
spoke in a grave patronising way), "and I called you on purpose to speak
to you upon the subject. I do not object to seeing the young men of this
establishment well and handsomely dressed; but I know that their salaries
cannot afford ornaments like those, and I grieve to see you with a thing
of such value. You have paid for it, sir,--I trust you have paid for it;
for, of all things, my dear--dear young friend, b