can do than go to Scotland. Dukes are more
plentiful there than in Pall Mall, and you will meet an earl or at
least a lord on every mountain. Of course, if you merely travel
about from inn to inn, and neither have a moor of your own nor stay
with any great friend, you don't quite enjoy the cream of it; but
to go to Scotland in August and stay there, perhaps, till the end
of September, is about the most certain step you can take towards
autumnal fashion. Switzerland and the Tyrol, and even Italy, are all
redolent of Mr. Cook, and in those beautiful lands you become subject
at least to suspicion.

By no persons was the duty of adhering to the best side of society
more clearly appreciated than by Mr. and Mrs. Hittaway of Warwick
Square. Mr. Hittaway was Chairman of the Board of Civil Appeals, and
was a man who quite understood that there are chairmen--and chairmen.
He could name to you three or four men holding responsible permanent
official positions quite as good as that he filled in regard to
salary,--which, as he often said of his own, was a mere nothing, just
a poor two thousand pounds a year, not as much as a grocer would make
in a decent business,--but they were simply head clerks and nothing
more. Nobody knew anything of them. They had no names. You did not
meet them anywhere. Cabinet ministers never heard of them; and nobody
out of their own offices ever consulted them. But there are others,
and Mr. Hittaway felt greatly conscious that he was one of them,
who move altogether in a different sphere. One minister of State
would ask another whether Hittaway had been consulted on this or on
that measure;--so at least the Hittawayites were in the habit of
reporting. The names of Mr. and Mrs. Hittaway were constantly in the
papers. They were invited to evening gatherings at the houses of both
the alternate Prime Ministers. They were to be seen at fashionable
gatherings up the river. They attended concerts at Buckingham Palace.
Once a year they gave a dinner-party which was inserted in the
"Morning Post." On such occasions at least one Cabinet Minister
always graced the board. In fact, Mr. Hittaway, as Chairman of the
Board of Civil Appeals, was somebody; and Mrs. Hittaway, as his wife
and as sister to a peer, was somebody also. The reader will remember
that Mrs. Hittaway had been a Fawn before she married.

There is this drawback upon the happy condition which Mr. Hittaway
had achieved,--that it demands a certain expen