his dear old George to Lady Rockminster,
who was astonished at his enthusiasm. She had never heard him so warm
in praise of anybody; and told him with her usual frankness, that she
didn't think it had been in his nature to care so much about any other
person.

As Mr. Pendennis was passing in Waterloo Place, in one of his many walks
to the hotel where Laura lived, and whither duty to his uncle carried
Arthur every day, Arthur saw issuing from Messrs. Gimcrack's celebrated
shop an old friend, who was followed to his brougham by an obsequious
shopman bearing parcels. The gentleman was in the deepest mourning:
the brougham, the driver, and the horse were in mourning. Grief in easy
circumstances and supported by the comfortablest springs and cushions,
was typified in the equipage and the little gentleman, its proprietor.

"What, Foker! Hail, Foker!" cried out Pen--the reader, no doubt, has
likewise recognised Arthur's old schoolfellow--and he held out his hand
to the heir of the late lamented John Henry Foker, Esq., the master of
Logwood and other houses, the principal partner in the great brewery of
Foker and Co.: the greater portion of Foker's Entire.

A little hand, covered with a glove of the deepest ebony, and set off
by three inches of a snowy wristband, was put forth to meet Arthur's
salutation. The other little hand held a little morocco case,
containing, no doubt, something precious, of which Mr. Foker had just
become proprietor in Messrs. Gimcrack's shop. Pen's keen eyes and
satiric turn showed him at once upon what errand Mr. Foker had been
employed; and he thought of the heir in Horace pouring forth the
gathered wine of his father's vats; and that human nature is pretty much
the same in Regent Street as in the Via Sacra.

"Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi!" said Arthur.

"Ah!" said the other. "Yes. Thank you--very much obliged. How do you do,
Pen?--very busy--good-bye!" and he jumped into the black brougham, and
sate like a little black Care behind the black coachman. He had blushed
on seeing Pen, and shown other signs of guilt and perturbation, which
Pen attributed to the novelty of his situation; and on which he began to
speculate in his usual sardonic manner.

"Yes: so wags the world," thought Pen. "The stone closes over Harry the
Fourth, and Harry the Fifth reigns in his stead. The old ministers at
the brewery come and kneel before him with their books; the draymen,
his subjects, fling up their red caps, an