re. If the SOUFFLE
should collapse, or if Wiggins does not send the ices in time--she feels
as if she would commit suicide--that smiling, jolly woman!

The children upstairs are yelling, as their maid is crimping their
miserable ringlets with hot tongs, tearing Miss Emmy's hair out by the
roots, or scrubbing Miss Polly's dumpy nose with mottled soap till the
little wretch screams herself into fits. The young males of the
family are employed, as we have stated, in piratical exploits upon the
landing-place.

The servants are not servants, but the before-mentioned retail
tradesmen.

The plate is not plate, but a mere shiny Birmingham lacquer; and so is
the hospitality, and everything else.

The talk is Birmingham talk. The wag of the party, with bitterness in
his heart, having just quitted his laundress, who is dunning him for her
bill, is firing off good stories; and the opposition wag is furious
that he cannot get an innings. Jawkins, the great conversationalist, is
scornful and indignant with the pair of them, because he is kept out of
court. Young Muscadel, that cheap dandy, is talking Fashion and Almack's
out of the MORNING POST, and disgusting his neighbour, Mrs. Fox, who
reflects that she has never been there. The widow is vexed out of
patience, because her daughter Maria has got a place beside young
Cambric, the penniless curate, and not by Colonel Goldmore, the rich
widower from India. The Doctor's wife is sulky, because she has not been
led out before the barrister's lady; old Doctor Cork is grumbling at the
wine, and Guttleton sneering at the cookery.

And to think that all these people might be so happy, and easy, and
friendly, were they brought together in a natural unpretentious way,
and but for an unhappy passion for peacocks' feathers in England. Gentle
shades of Marat and Robespierre! when I see how all the honesty of
society is corrupted among us by the miserable fashion-worship, I feel
as angry as Mrs. Fox just mentioned, and ready to order a general BATTUE
of peacocks.

CHAPTER XXI--SOME CONTINENTAL SNOBS

Now that September has come, and all our Parliamentary duties are over,
perhaps no class of Snobs are in such high feather as the Continental
Snobs. I watch these daily as they commence their migrations from the
beach at Folkestone. I see shoals of them depart (not perhaps without
an innate longing too to quit the Island along with those happy Snobs).
Farewell, dear friends, I say: you li