em with boyish profusion. Lady Kew's luck
had blessed him with more sacks of oats than fell to the lot of his
noble young companions. Lord Dorking's house is known to have been long
impoverished; an excellent informant, Major Pendennis, has entertained
me with many edifying accounts of the exploits of Lord Rooster's
grandfather "with the wild Prince and Poins," of his feats in the
hunting-field, over the bottle, over the dice-box. He played two nights
and two days at a sitting with Charles Fox, when they both lost sums
awful to reckon. He played often with Lord Steyne, and came away, as
all men did, dreadful sufferers from those midnight encounters. His
descendants incurred the penalties of the progenitor's imprudence, and
Chanticlere, though one of the finest castles in England, is splendid
but for a month in the year. The estate is mortgaged up to the very
castle windows. "Dorking cannot cut a stick or kill a buck in his own
park," the good old Major used to tell with tragic accents, "he lives by
his cabbages, grapes, and pineapples, and the fees which people give for
seeing the place and gardens, which are still the show of the
county, and among the most splendid in the island. When Dorking is at
Chanticlere, Ballard, who married his sister, lends him the plate and
sends three men with it. Four cooks inside, and four maids and six
footmen on the roof, with a butler driving, come down from London in a
trap, and wait the month. And as the last carriage of the company drives
away, the servants' coach is packed, and they all bowl back to town
again. It's pitiable, sir, pitiable."

In Lord Kew's youth, the names of himself and his two noble friends
appeared on innumerable slips of stamped paper, conveying pecuniary
assurances of a promissory nature; all of which promises, my Lord
Kew singly and most honourably discharged. Neither of his two
companions-in-arms had the means of meeting these engagements. Ballard,
Rooster's uncle, was said to make his lordship some allowance. As for
Jack Belsize: how he lived; how he laughed; how he dressed himself so
well, and looked so fat and handsome; how he got a shilling to pay for a
cab or a cigar; what ravens fed him; was a wonder to all. The young men
claimed kinsmanship with one another, which those who are learned in the
peerage may unravel.

When Lord Dorking's eldest daughter married the Honourable and Venerable
Dennis Gallowglass, Archdeacon of Bullintubber (and at present Vis