dinner-time; there
were rowing men, whose discourse was of sculling matches, the Red House,
Vauxhall and the Opera; there were others great in politics, and orators
of the students' debating clubs; with all of which sets, except the
first, whose talk was an almost unknown and a quite uninteresting
language to him, Mr. Pen made a gradual acquaintance, and had many
points of sympathy.

The ancient and liberal Inn of the Upper Temple provides in its Hall,
and for a most moderate price, an excellent wholesome dinner of soup,
meat, tarts, and port wine or sherry, for the barristers and students
who attend that place of refection. The parties are arranged in messes
of four, each of which quartets has its piece of beef or leg of mutton,
its sufficient apple-pie and its bottle of wine. But the honest habitues
of the hall, amongst the lower rank of students, who have a taste
for good living, have many harmless arts by which they improve their
banquet, and innocent 'dodges' (if we may be permitted to use an
excellent phrase that has become vernacular since the appearance of the
last dictionaries) by which they strive to attain for themselves more
delicate food than the common every-day roast meat of the students'
tables.

"Wait a bit," said Mr. Lowton, one of these Temple gourmands. "Wait a
bit," said Mr. Lowton, tugging at Pen's gown--"the side-tables are very
full, and there's only three benchers to eat ten dishes--if we wait,
perhaps we shall get something from their table." And Pen looked with
some amusement, as did Mr. Lowton with eyes of fond desire, towards the
benchers' high table, where three old gentlemen were standing up before
a dozen silver dish-covers, while the clerk was quavering out a grace.

Lowton was great in the conduct of the dinner. His aim was to manage so
as to be the first, a captain of the mess, and to secure for himself
the thirteenth glass of the bottle of port wine. Thus he would have the
command of the joint on which he operated his favourite cuts, and made
rapid dexterous appropriations of gravy, which amused Pen infinitely.
Poor Jack Lowton! thy pleasures in life were very harmless; an eager
epicure, thy desires did not go beyond eighteen pence.

Pen was somewhat older than many of his fellow-students, and there was
that about his style and appearance, which, as we have said, was rather
haughty and impertinent, that stamped him as a man of ton--very unlike
those pale students who were talking