No wonder that he relished the dinners at Shepherd's
Inn, and was perfectly resigned there: resigned? he was so happy nowhere
else; he was wretched amongst his equals, who scorned him--but here he
was the chief guest at the table, where they continually addressed
him with "Yes, Sir Francis" and "No, Sir Francis," where he told his
wretched jokes, and where he quavered his dreary little French song,
after Strong had sung his Jovial chorus, and honest Costigan had
piped his Irish ditties. Such a jolly menage as Strong's, with Grady's
Irish-stew, and the Chevalier's brew of punch after dinner, would have
been welcome to many a better man than Clavering, the solitude of whose
great house at home frightened him, where he was attended only by the
old woman who kept the house, and his valet who sneered at him.

"Yes, dammit," said he to his friends in Shepherd's Inn, "that fellow of
mine, I must turn him away, only I owe him two years' wages, curse him,
and can't ask my lady. He brings me my tea cold of a morning, with a
dem'd leaden teaspoon, and he says my lady's sent all the plate to the
banker's because it ain't safe.--Now ain't it hard that she won't trust
me with a single teaspoon; ain't it ungentlemanlike, Altamont? You know
my lady's of low birth--that is--I beg your pardon--hem--that is,
it's most cruel of her not to show more confidence in me. And the very
servants begin to laugh--the damn scoundrels! I break every bone in
their great hulking bodies, curse 'em, I will.--They don't answer
my bell: and--and my man was at Vauxhall last night with one of my
dress-shirts and my velvet waistcoat on, I know it was mine--the
confounded impudent blackguard--and he went on dancing before my eyes
confound him! I'm sure he'll live to be hanged--he deserves to be
hanged--all those infernal rascals of valets."

He was very kind to Altamont now: he listened to the Colonel's loud
stories when Altamont described how--when he was working his way home
once from New Zealand, where he had been on a whaling expedition--he and
his comrades had been obliged to slink on board at night, to escape from
their wives, by Jove--and how the poor devils put out in their canoes
when they saw the ship under sail, and paddled madly after her: how he
had been lost in the bush once for three months in New South Wales, when
he was there once on a trading speculation: how he had seen Boney at
Saint Helena, and been presented to him with the rest of the of