the amusements in which it had been
passed. A couple of billiard balls, all mud and dirt, two battered hats,
a champagne bottle with a soiled glove twisted round the neck, to allow
of its being grasped more surely in its capacity of an offensive
weapon; a broken cane; a card-case without the top; an empty purse; a
watch-guard snapped asunder; a handful of silver, mingled with fragments
of half-smoked cigars, and their stale and crumbled ashes;--these, and
many other tokens of riot and disorder, hinted very intelligibly at the
nature of last night's gentlemanly frolics.

Lord Frederick Verisopht was the first to speak. Dropping his slippered
foot on the ground, and, yawning heavily, he struggled into a sitting
posture, and turned his dull languid eyes towards his friend, to whom he
called in a drowsy voice.

'Hallo!' replied Sir Mulberry, turning round.

'Are we going to lie here all da-a-y?' said the lord.

'I don't know that we're fit for anything else,' replied Sir Mulberry;
'yet awhile, at least. I haven't a grain of life in me this morning.'

'Life!' cried Lord Verisopht. 'I feel as if there would be nothing so
snug and comfortable as to die at once.'

'Then why don't you die?' said Sir Mulberry.

With which inquiry he turned his face away, and seemed to occupy himself
in an attempt to fall asleep.

His hopeful fiend and pupil drew a chair to the breakfast-table, and
essayed to eat; but, finding that impossible, lounged to the window,
then loitered up and down the room with his hand to his fevered head,
and finally threw himself again on his sofa, and roused his friend once
more.

'What the devil's the matter?' groaned Sir Mulberry, sitting upright on
the couch.

Although Sir Mulberry said this with sufficient ill-humour, he did
not seem to feel himself quite at liberty to remain silent; for, after
stretching himself very often, and declaring with a shiver that it
was 'infernal cold,' he made an experiment at the breakfast-table, and
proving more successful in it than his less-seasoned friend, remained
there.

'Suppose,' said Sir Mulberry, pausing with a morsel on the point of his
fork, 'suppose we go back to the subject of little Nickleby, eh?'

'Which little Nickleby; the money-lender or the ga-a-l?' asked Lord
Verisopht.

'You take me, I see,' replied Sir Mulberry. 'The girl, of course.'

'You promised me you'd find her out,' said Lord Verisopht.

'So I did,' rejoined his friend; 'but I have t