Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/86

56, the gentlemen always pay for the ladies! Nor was this all the expense to which his expectations exposed him. A gentleman could scarcely attend these elegant festivities without devoting some little attention to his dress; and a fashionable tailor plays the deuce with one's yearly allowance!

We, who reside, be it known to you, reader, in Little Brittany, are not very well acquainted with the manners of the better classes in St. James's. But there was one great vice among the fine people about Thames Court, which we make no doubt does not exist anywhere else, viz. these fine people were always in an agony to seem finer than they were; and the more airs a gentleman or a lady gave him or her—self, the more important they became. Joe, the dog's-meat man, had indeed got into society, entirely from a knack of saying impertinent things to every body; and the smartest exclusives of the place, who seldom visited any one where there was not a silver teapot, used to think Joe had a great deal in him because he trundled his cart with his head in the air, and one day gave the very beadle of the parish "the cut direct."