t to compete with the great folks; and
all that they can ask from us is, that we should have a decent address
and good manners."

"But for all that, sir, I should belong to a better Club or two," the
uncle answered: "I should give an occasional dinner, and select my
society well; and I should come out of that horrible garret in the
Temple, sir." And so Arthur compromised by descending to the second
floor in Lamb Court: Warrington still occupying his old quarters,
and the two friends being determined not to part one from the other.
Cultivate kindly, reader, those friendships of your youth: it is only in
that generous time that they are formed. How different the intimacies of
after days are, and how much weaker the grasp of your own hand after it
has been shaken about in twenty years' commerce with the world, and
has squeezed and dropped a thousand equally careless palms! As you can
seldom fashion your tongue to speak a new language after twenty, the
heart refuses to receive friendship pretty soon: it gets too hard to
yield to the impression.

So Pen had many acquaintances, and being of a jovial and easy turn, got
more daily: but no friend like Warrington; and the two men continued to
live almost as much in common as the Knights of the Temple, riding upon
one horse (for Pen's was at Warrington's service), and having their
chambers and their servitor in common.

Mr. Warrington had made the acquaintance of Pen's friends of Grosvenor
Place during their last unlucky season in London, and had expressed
himself no better satisfied with Sir Francis and Lady Clavering and
her ladyship's daughter than was the public in general. "The world is
right," George said, "about those people. The young men laugh and talk
freely before those ladies, and about them. The girl sees people whom
she has no right to know, and talks to men with whom no girl should
have an intimacy. Did you see those two reprobates leaning over Lady
Clavering's carriage in the Park the other day, and leering under Miss
Blanche's bonnet? No good mother would let her daughter know those men,
or admit them within her doors."

"The Begum is the most innocent and good-natured soul alive," interposed
Pen. "She never heard any harm of Captain Blackball, or read that trial
in which Charley Lovelace figures. Do you suppose that honest ladies
read and remember the Chronique Scandaleuse as well as you, you old
grumbler?"

"Would you like Laura Bell to know those fellows?