plesone, as if the idea had
never struck her before.

'And cabmen, too,' said Mr. Simpson. This remark was a failure, for no
one intimated, by word or sign, the slightest knowledge of the manners
and customs of cabmen.

'Robinson, what _do_ you want?' said Mrs. Tibbs to the servant, who, by
way of making her presence known to her mistress, had been giving sundry
hems and sniffs outside the door during the preceding five minutes.

'Please, ma'am, master wants his clean things,' replied the servant,
taken off her guard. The two young men turned their faces to the window,
and 'went off' like a couple of bottles of ginger-beer; the ladies put
their handkerchiefs to their mouths; and little Mrs. Tibbs bustled out of
the room to give Tibbs his clean linen,--and the servant warning.

Mr. Calton, the remaining boarder, shortly afterwards made his
appearance, and proved a surprising promoter of the conversation. Mr.
Calton was a superannuated beau--an old boy. He used to say of himself
that although his features were not regularly handsome, they were
striking. They certainly were. It was impossible to look at his face
without being reminded of a chubby street-door knocker, half-lion
half-monkey; and the comparison might be extended to his whole character
and conversation. He had stood still, while everything else had been
moving. He never originated a conversation, or started an idea; but if
any commonplace topic were broached, or, to pursue the comparison, if
anybody _lifted him up_, he would hammer away with surprising rapidity.
He had the tic-douloureux occasionally, and then he might be said to be
muffled, because he did not make quite as much noise as at other times,
when he would go on prosing, rat-tat-tat the same thing over and over
again. He had never been married; but he was still on the look-out for a
wife with money. He had a life interest worth about 300_l._ a year--he
was exceedingly vain, and inordinately selfish. He had acquired the
reputation of being the very pink of politeness, and he walked round the
park, and up Regent-street, every day.

This respectable personage had made up his mind to render himself
exceedingly agreeable to Mrs. Maplesone--indeed, the desire of being as
amiable as possible extended itself to the whole party; Mrs. Tibbs having
considered it an admirable little bit of management to represent to the
gentlemen that she had _some_ reason to believe the ladies were fortunes,
an