Lightfoot, sir, what will you
take? though you've had enough already, I think; yes, ha."

So spoke Harry Foker in the bar of the Clavering Arms. He had apartments
at that hotel, and had gathered a circle of friends round him there. He
treated all to drink who came. He was hail-fellow with every man. He was
so happy! He danced round Madame Fribsby, Mrs. Lightfoot's great ally,
as she sate pensive in the bar. He consoled Mrs. Lightfoot, who had
already begun to have causes of matrimonial disquiet; for the truth
must be told, that young Lightfoot, having now the full command of the
cellar, had none over his own unbridled desires, and was tippling and
tipsy from morning till night. And a piteous sight it was for his fond
wife to behold the big youth reeling about the yard and coffee-room, or
drinking with the farmers and tradesmen his own neat wines and carefully
selected stock of spirits.

When he could find time, Mr. Morgan the butler came from the Park, and
took a glass at the expense of the landlord of the Clavering Arms.
He watched poor Lightfoot's tipsy vagaries with savage sneers. Mrs.
Lightfoot felt always doubly uncomfortable when her unhappy spouse was
under his comrade's eye. But a few months married, and to think he had
got to this! Madame Fribsby could feel for her. Madame Fribsby could
tell her stories of men every bit as bad. She had had her own woes
too, and her sad experience of men. So it is that nobody seems happy
altogether; and that there's bitters, as Mr. Foker remarked, in the cup
of every man's life. And yet there did not seem to be any in his,
the honest young fellow! It was brimming over with happiness and
good-humour.

Mr. Morgan was constant in his attentions to Foker. "And yet I don't
like him somehow," said the candid young man to Mrs. Lightfoot.
"He always seems as if he was measuring me for my coffin somehow.
Pa-in-law's afraid of him; pa-in-law's, ahem! never mind, but
ma-in-law's a trump, Mrs. Lightfoot."

"Indeed my Lady was," and Mrs. Lightfoot owned, with a sigh, that
perhaps it had been better for her had she never left her mistress.

"No, I do not like thee, Dr. Fell; the reason why I cannot tell,"
continued Mr. Foker; "and he wants to be taken as my head man. Blanche
wants me to take him. Why does Miss Amory like him so?"

"Did Miss Blanche like him so?" The notion seemed to disturb Mrs.
Lightfoot very much; and there came to this worthy landlady another
cause for disturbance.