h equally benevolent intentions, introduced him simultaneously
to Ursula May. "The poor little girl has not danced once," Mrs.
Copperhead, who had recollections of standing by herself for a whole
evening, unnoticed, whispered in his ear, and Miss Dorset spoke to him
still more plainly. "We brought her," she said, "but I cannot get her
partners, for I don't know anybody." And what could Clarence do but
offer himself? And Ursula, too, was a good dancer, and very pretty--far
prettier than Phoebe.

"Confound him! there he is now for ever with that girl in white," said
his father to himself, with great rage. Dozens of good partners in pink
and blue were going about the room. What did the boy mean by bestowing
himself upon the two poor ones, the black and the white. This disturbed
Mr. Copperhead's enjoyment, as he stood in the doorway of the ball-room,
looking round upon all the splendour that was his, and feeling disposed,
like Nebuchadnezzar, to call upon everybody to come and worship him. He
expanded and swelled out with pride and complacency, as he looked round
upon his own greatness, and perceived the effect made upon the
beholders. When that effect did not seem sufficiently deep, he called
here and there upon a lingerer for applause. "That's considered a very
fine Turner," he said, taking one of them into a smaller room. "Come
along here, you know about that sort of thing--I don't. I should be
ashamed to tell you how much I gave for it; all that money hanging there
useless, bringing in nothing! But when I do buy anything I like it to be
the very best that is to be had."

"I'd as soon have a good chromo," said the person addressed, "which
costs a matter of a five-pound note, and enough too, to hang up against
a wall. But you can afford it, Copperhead. You've the best right of any
man I know to be a fool if you like."

The great man laughed, but he scarcely liked the compliment. "I am a
fool if you like," he said, "the biggest fool going. I like a thing that
costs a deal, and is of no use. That's what I call luxury. My boy,
Clarence, and my big picture, they're dear; but I can afford 'em, if
they were double the price."

"If I were you," said his friend, "I wouldn't hang my picture in this
little bit of a hole, nor let my boy waste his time with all the
riff-raff in the room. There's Smith's girl and Robinson's niece, both
of them worth a cool hundred thousand; and you leave him to flourish
about all over the place wi