own.
Any more?"

"The whole antechamber is full, my lord--knights and squires, doctors
and dicers."

"The dicers, with their doctors[*] in their pockets, I presume."

[*] Doctor, a cant name for false dice.

"Counts, captains, and clergymen."

"You are alliterative, Jerningham," said the Duke; "and that is a proof
you are poetical. Hand me my writing things."

Getting half out of bed--thrusting one arm into a brocade nightgown,
deeply furred with sables, and one foot into a velvet slipper, while the
other pressed in primitive nudity the rich carpet--his Grace, without
thinking farther on the assembly without, began to pen a few lines of
a satirical poem; then suddenly stopped--threw the pen into the
chimney--exclaimed that the humour was past--and asked his attendant if
there were any letters. Jerningham produced a huge packet.

"What the devil!" said his Grace, "do you think I will read all these? I
am like Clarence, who asked a cup of wine, and was soused into a butt of
sack. I mean, is there anything which presses?"

"This letter, your Grace," said Jerningham, "concerning the Yorkshire
mortgage."

"Did I not bid thee carry it to old Gatheral, my steward?"

"I did, my lord," answered the other; "but Gatheral says there are
difficulties."

"Let the usurers foreclose, then--there is no difficulty in that; and
out of a hundred manors I shall scarce miss one," answered the Duke.
"And hark ye, bring me my chocolate."

"Nay, my lord, Gatheral does not say it is impossible--only difficult."

"And what is the use of him, if he cannot make it easy? But you are all
born to make difficulties," replied the Duke.

"Nay, if your Grace approves the terms in this schedule, and pleases to
sign it, Gatheral will undertake for the matter," answered Jerningham.

"And could you not have said so at first, you blockhead?" said the Duke,
signing the paper without looking at the contents--"What other letters?
And remember, I must be plagued with no more business."

"Billets-doux, my lord--five or six of them. This left at the porter's
lodge by a vizard mask."

"Pshaw!" answered the Duke, tossing them over, while his attendant
assisted in dressing him--"an acquaintance of a quarter's standing."

"This given to one of the pages by my Lady ----'s waiting-woman."

"Plague on it--a Jeremiade on the subject of perjury and treachery, and
not a single new line to the old tune," said the Duke, glancing over the
billet. "He