e right, friend. I commend your prudence highly. Thank
you. God bless you. Good night.'

To be commended, thanked, God-blessed, and bade good night by one who
carried 'Sir' before his name, and wrote himself M.P. to boot, was
something for a porter. He withdrew with much humility and reverence.
Sir John followed his late visitor into the dressing-room, and sitting
in his easy-chair before the fire, and moving it so that he could see
him as he stood, hat in hand, beside the door, looked at him from head
to foot.

The old face, calm and pleasant as ever; the complexion, quite juvenile
in its bloom and clearness; the same smile; the wonted precision and
elegance of dress; the white, well-ordered teeth; the delicate hands;
the composed and quiet manner; everything as it used to be: no mark of
age or passion, envy, hate, or discontent: all unruffled and serene, and
quite delightful to behold.

He wrote himself M.P.--but how? Why, thus. It was a proud family--more
proud, indeed, than wealthy. He had stood in danger of arrest; of
bailiffs, and a jail--a vulgar jail, to which the common people with
small incomes went. Gentlemen of ancient houses have no privilege of
exemption from such cruel laws--unless they are of one great house, and
then they have. A proud man of his stock and kindred had the means of
sending him there. He offered--not indeed to pay his debts, but to let
him sit for a close borough until his own son came of age, which, if he
lived, would come to pass in twenty years. It was quite as good as an
Insolvent Act, and infinitely more genteel. So Sir John Chester was a
member of Parliament.

But how Sir John? Nothing so simple, or so easy. One touch with a sword
of state, and the transformation was effected. John Chester, Esquire,
M.P., attended court--went up with an address--headed a deputation.
Such elegance of manner, so many graces of deportment, such powers of
conversation, could never pass unnoticed. Mr was too common for
such merit. A man so gentlemanly should have been--but Fortune is
capricious--born a Duke: just as some dukes should have been born
labourers. He caught the fancy of the king, knelt down a grub, and rose
a butterfly. John Chester, Esquire, was knighted and became Sir John.

'I thought when you left me this evening, my esteemed acquaintance,'
said Sir John after a pretty long silence, 'that you intended to return
with all despatch?'

'So I did, master.'

'And so you have?' he retor