uite black and blue; and I recklect Mrs. Bonner, who's
as jealous of me as a old cat, boxed her ears for showing me. And then
you should see Miss at luncheon, when there's nobody but the family! She
makes b'leave she never heats, and my! you should only jest see her. She
has Mary Hann to bring her up plum-cakes and creams into her bedroom;
and the cook's the only man in the house she's civil to. Bonner says,
how, the second season in London, Mr. Soppington was a-goin' to propose
for her, and actially came one day, and sor her fling a book into the
fire, and scold her mother so, that he went down softly by the back
droring-room door, which he came in by; and next thing we heard of
him was, he was married to Miss Rider. Oh, she's a devil, that little
Blanche, and that's my candig apinium, Mr. Morgan."

"Apinion, not apinium, Lightfoot, my good fellow," Mr. Morgan said, with
parental kindness, and then asked of his own bosom with a sigh, why the
deuce does my Governor want Master Arthur to marry such a girl as this?
and the tete-a-tete of the two gentlemen was broken up by the entry
of other gentlemen, members of the Club--when fashionable town-talk,
politics, cribbage, and other amusements ensued, and the conversation
became general.

The Gentleman's Club was held in the parlour of the Wheel of Fortune
public-house, in a snug little by-lane, leading out of one of the great
streets of Mayfair, and frequented by some of the most select gentlemen
about town. Their masters' affairs, debts, intrigues, adventures; their
ladies' good and bad qualities and quarrels with their husbands; all the
family secrets were here discussed with perfect freedom and confidence,
and here, when about to enter into a new situation, a gentleman was
enabled to get every requisite information regarding the family of
which he proposed to become a member. Liveries it may be imagined
were excluded from this select precinct; and the powdered heads of the
largest metropolitan footmen might bow down in vain entreating admission
into the Gentleman's Club. These outcast giants in plush took their beer
in an outer apartment of the Wheel of Fortune, and could no more get an
entry into the Clubroom than a Pall Mall tradesman or a Lincoln's Inn
attorney could get admission into Bays's or Spratt's. And it is because
the conversation which we have permitted to overhear here, in some
measure explains the characters and bearings of our story, that we have
ventured