se numerous avocations were rather
calculated to interfere with Mr. Percy Noakes's professional studies.
Mr. Percy Noakes was perfectly aware of the fact, and had, therefore,
after mature reflection, made up his mind not to study at all--a laudable
determination, to which he adhered in the most praiseworthy manner. His
sitting-room presented a strange chaos of dress-gloves, boxing-gloves,
caricatures, albums, invitation-cards, foils, cricket-bats, cardboard
drawings, paste, gum, and fifty other miscellaneous articles, heaped
together in the strangest confusion. He was always making something for
somebody, or planning some party of pleasure, which was his great
_forte_. He invariably spoke with astonishing rapidity; was smart,
spoffish, and eight-and-twenty.

'Splendid idea, 'pon my life!' soliloquised Mr. Percy Noakes, over his
morning coffee, as his mind reverted to a suggestion which had been
thrown out on the previous night, by a lady at whose house he had spent
the evening. 'Glorious idea!--Mrs. Stubbs.'

'Yes, sir,' replied a dirty old woman with an inflamed countenance,
emerging from the bedroom, with a barrel of dirt and cinders.--This was
the laundress. 'Did you call, sir?'

'Oh! Mrs. Stubbs, I'm going out. If that tailor should call again,
you'd better say--you'd better say I'm out of town, and shan't be back
for a fortnight; and if that bootmaker should come, tell him I've lost
his address, or I'd have sent him that little amount. Mind he writes it
down; and if Mr. Hardy should call--you know Mr. Hardy?'

'The funny gentleman, sir?'

'Ah! the funny gentleman. If Mr. Hardy should call, say I've gone to
Mrs. Taunton's about that water-party.'

'Yes, sir.'

'And if any fellow calls, and says he's come about a steamer, tell him to
be here at five o'clock this afternoon, Mrs. Stubbs.'

'Very well, sir.'

Mr. Percy Noakes brushed his hat, whisked the crumbs off his
inexpressibles with a silk handkerchief, gave the ends of his hair a
persuasive roll round his forefinger, and sallied forth for Mrs.
Taunton's domicile in Great Marlborough-street, where she and her
daughters occupied the upper part of a house. She was a good-looking
widow of fifty, with the form of a giantess and the mind of a child. The
pursuit of pleasure, and some means of killing time, were the sole end of
her existence. She doted on her daughters, who were as frivolous as
herself.

A general exclamation of satisfaction hail