quence. "There's young Jones. He is fairly good-looking, but hasn't
a word to say for himself. He will do to pair off with Miss Smith,
who'll talk for a dozen. He can't hit a hay-stack, but he's none the
worse for that. We haven't got too many pheasants. He'll be sure to come
when you ask him,--and he'll be sure to go."

So Jones is asked, and considers himself to be the most popular man in
London. I will not say that Harry's invitations had been of exactly that
description; but he too had considered himself to be popular, and now
greatly felt the withdrawal of such marks of friendship. He had received
one "put off"--from the Ingoldsbys of Kent. Early in June he had
promised to be there in November. The youngest Miss Ingoldsby was very
pretty, and he, no doubt, had been gracious. She knew that he had meant
nothing,--could have meant nothing. But he might come to mean something,
and had been most pressingly asked. In September there came a letter to
him to say that the room intended for him at Ingoldsby had been burnt
down. Mrs. Ingoldsby was so extremely sorry, and so were the "girls!"
Harry could trace it all up. The Ingoldsbys knew the Greens, and Mrs.
Green was Sister to Septimus Jones, who was absolutely the slave,--the
slave, as Harry said, repeating the word to himself with emphasis,--of
Augustus Scarborough. He was very unhappy, not that he cared in the
least for any Miss Ingoldsby, but that he began to be conscious that he
was to be dropped.

He was to be taken up, on the other hand, by Joshua Thoroughbung. Alas!
alas! though he smiled and resolved to accept his brother-in-law with a
good heart, this did not in the least salve the wound. His own county
was to him less than other counties, and his own neighborhood less than
other neighborhoods. Buntingford was full of Thoroughbungs, the best
people in the world, but not quite up to what he believed to be his
mark. Mr. Prosper himself was the stupidest ass! At Welwyn people
smelled of the City. At Stevenage the parsons' set began. Baldock was a
_caput mortuum_ of dulness. Royston was alive only on market-days. Of
his own father's house, and even of his mother and sisters, he
entertained ideas that savored a little of depreciation. But, to redeem
him from this fault,--a fault which would have led to the absolute ruin
of his character had it not been redeemed and at last cured,--there was a
consciousness of his own vanity and weakness. "My father is worth a
dozen o