ry much; but it is very seldom
that he has any provocation, unless compelled by business, to stay some
years, for acquaintances are harder to make in London than in any other
city, while it has less resources for a man without acquaintances than
any other city--besides being so dear. But here come the ladies at last;
now for breakfast."

Breakfast was the best managed meal at the Bath Hotel. The _table
d'hote_ began at half past seven, but fresh relays of rolls and eggs,
ham, chops, and steaks, were always to be obtained until half-past ten
or eleven by those who had interest with the waiters. After breakfast
the company went to work promenading. There was a very wide hall running
through the hotel, and up and down this, and up and down the two
broadest sides of the portico, all the world walked--"our set" being
conspicuous from the elegance of their morning costume. One side of the
portico was devoted to the gentlemen and their cigars, and there
Ashburner and Benson took a turn, leaving with the ladies Le Roi and a
small beau or two who had joined them. Suddenly Benson pressed his
friend's arm.

"Here comes _really_ 'one of the most remarkable men'--the very god of
the dance; behold Tom Edwards!"

Ashburner beheld a little man, about five feet and a half high. If he
could have stood on his bushy black beard it would have lifted him full
three inches higher. Besides this beard he cherished a small moustache,
very elaborately curling-tongsed at the ends into the shape of half a
lyre. Otherwise he had not much hair on his head, but what he had was
very carefully brushed. His features were delicate, and not without
intelligence, but terribly worn by dissipation. To look at his figure,
you would take him for a boy of nineteen; to look at his face, for a man
of thirty: he was, probably, about half way between the two ages. Every
thing about him was wonderfully neat: a white coat and hat like
Benson's; cream-colored waistcoat and pearl-colored trousers;
miraculously small feet in resplendent boots, looking more like a doll's
extremities than a man's; a fresh kid glove on one of his little hands,
and on the other a sapphire ring, so large that Ashburner wondered how
the little man could carry it, and thought that he should, like
Juvenal's dandies, have kept a lighter article for summer wear. Then he
had a watch-chain of great balls of blue enamel, with about two pounds
of chatelaine charms dependent therefrom; and delicate