of mine shall ever claim insertion in the columns
of the press, and I will go on charging seven
pounds ten shillings for a frock-coat. There
are people who like to be mulct for wax candles
at an hotel, and who would think it derogatory
to their dignity to pay less than seven-and-
sixpence for a fried sole and a mutton-chop.
Yes, there are persons who are uncomfortable
unless they are overcharged. Dearness has
a kind of affinity with high Toryism, and others
of our glorious institutions. Cheapness is democratic;
cheapness is levelling. I have always
been of opinion that a daily newspaper printed
on cream-laid bank post, hot pressed, gilt-edged,
and sold at the rate of half-a-crown a number,
would be a success. It might have but a small
circulation, but it would pay, and it would be
read by the superior classes by the light of three-
and-sixpenny wax-candles, after seven-and-sixpenny
dinners, and while sipping port at fourteen
shillings a bottle.

The validity or otherwise of this hypothesis
is no excuse, however, for keeping a number of
very hungry people waiting for their dinner.
The lady passed the bald-headed landlord with a
stately inclination of the head. The landlord
called out in a rich, but subdued voice— a voice
like iced Moselle — " Show the Benbow!" An
obsequious waiter, with curved red whiskers,
very like the claws of a lobster, conducted the
guests up the softly carpeted staircase, and
handed them over to the mistress of the robes, a
buxom chambermaid.

As the lady, deftly unshawled, but still keeping
on her bonnet, swept towards the Benbow,
preceded by another waiter, the buxom chambermaid,
who had just taken off Lily's hat, and
fluttered a brush over her brown curls, stooped
down and kissed the child.

"Poor little innocent darling," she whispered.
"Is that your mamma, my darling?"

"I don't know," answered the child, looking
up to the face of her querist with a very trustful
look, for by the young woman's voice she
was kind and honest.

"Poor little thing," the chambermaid continued,
"what does this pet know about devilled
bait? Why, they'd burn her tongue out! Don't
you eat no devil, my dear."

Lily gazed at her with blank surprise. She
had heard — what child has not? of the devil —
and had been warned to avoid him and all his
works; but she had never been counselled not
to eat him.

"Nor yet don't you take no punch, nor no
sauce pickang," went on the chambermaid.
"There, go along, dear, your ma's calling
you."

"It's a shame to bring children here," the
buxom chambermaid subsequently remarked to
the waiter with the lobster-claw whiskers. " It
can't do 'em no good, and it's enough to ruin
their little stomachs. I don't mind the Eton
boys that come here with their pas, and always
manage to get tipsy unbeknown, and nearly dash
their young brains out a trying monkey tricks
outside the balcony, and then race up and
down stairs like mad. I don't mind them.
Mischief they're born to, and mischief they're
bred to. But what does that Frenchwoman
want here with that little bit of a thing! I
don't believe she's her ma. She's been here
four or five times this season. Last time she
brought an old Frenchwoman who spilt snuff
into her salmon cutlets, and got tipsy half an
hour before the ducks came up. My belief,
William, is, that she's nothing better than a
play-actress."

Another groom of the chambers threw open
the Benbow, a pretty saloon overlooking the
river, and announced the new arrivals.

He was a waiter with very light dun-coloured
hair and a pale pasty face. He was warm in
appearance, but not moist; the rather, crisp. It
was scarcely an unnatural fancy to imagine that
he had been fried in batter, and that, although
now a waiter, he had, according to the (not then
broached) Theory of Development, sprung from
a whitebait.

Have you never observed how very like fish
the waiters at Greenwich are? There is the
John Dory waiter; the miller's thumb waiter,
plump and plethoric; the whitebait waiter; the
eel waiter, who wriggles very much as he
waits.

A group of gentlemen advanced to meet the
lady and her little client. They received her
with many bows and more smiles. Lily was not
at all frightened of them, for though so very
grandly dressed they were all very kind and
friendly to her. There was a large old gentleman
with an embossed velvet waistcoat, and a
great gold chain meandering over it, and a
beautiful fringe of white whisker round his
purple face. He had a fine hook nose, very
prominent and very deeply coloured, and to Lily
lie looked like a splendid Punch. She had seen
Punch, once or twice, by sly peeps from the
windows of Rhododendron House, and had
woven a child-legend about him that he and the
Little Hunchback, and the porter who boxed
the Barmecide's ears, were brothers. This old
gentleman his companions addressed, but without
much restraint, as Marquis. He had a
loud voice, and often addressed the countess
in that which was an unknown tongue to
Lily. There were two or three gentlemen
equally splendid, but younger, who were
addressed indifferently as Tom, Dick, and Harry,
whichever you please; and there was a spiteful-
looking gentleman with very big black whiskers,
which looked as though they had not been
originally sable, but had acquired that hue by
means of some artful pigment. This gentleman
wore a high black stock, and a coat buttoned up
to his chin, and his trousers were strapped very
tightly over his boots: to the heels of which boots,
Lily saw something long and bright attached,
with a spiky star at the end of each.

Finally, there was a very tall gentleman — a
painfully tall gentleman, for there seemed no
end to his legs — who kept a little apart from
the others, and did not laugh so loud as they
did. He had a long face, very thin and pale,