the orchestra with its shell-shaped sounding-
board, and the little hutch beneath, where you
purchased the creaming stout in brown jugs
which might once have been Toby Philpots,
and have lived in the vales ! should like so
to weep, a little; but, unfortunately, there is
no time to weep. The Pilgrims and Madame
Ernestine, professor of the high school of
horsemanship, are waiting. Let others mourn
the fiddlers who were wont to wear the cocked-
hats; the tipsy, fraudulent waiters, alternately
cringing and abusive; the masters of the
ceremonies, humble disciples of the school of the
immortal S——; the money-takers; the gipsy
fortune-teller and the prophetic hermit. They
were all worthy folk, no doubt, but have
disappeared. So have the petrified fowls at five
shillings each, the ham cut so thin that it
resembled the leaves of some fatty sensitive plant,
and curled into shrinking convolutions when
you touched it; the rack punch, so called from
its fumes inflicting on you next morning the
worst tortures of the Tower of London and the
Spanish Inquisition; and that remarkable
rose-pink champagne which never went round more
than once, and never cost less than half a guinea
a bottle.

It was M'Variety who, as Tom Tuttleshell
correctly observed, had hit upon the notable
device of opening Ranelagh in the winter, and
at a shilling a head. The experiment was
disastrous—every experiment ended, in the long
run, at Ranelagh in catastrophe—but its
commencement was not destitute of a certain
brilliance. Thomas Tuttleshell had done M'Variety
much good since the beginning of the winter
season. He had made up many parties, and
brought many lords there. He had interested
himself with editors, and affably presided at a
supper of the élite of intellect held to inaugurate
the artificial skating pond. In fact, with the
exception of the capitalist in the wine trade,
who was losing his weekly hundreds in backing
the manager of Ranelagh, Thomas Tuttleshell
was M'Variety's dearest friend.

The manager was standing at the water-
wicket, keeping, as was his custom, a very sharp
look-out both on the pay-place and the free list
box, as the party from the Pilgrims' Club alighted
from their cab. It may be imagined how many
cordial pressures of the hand he bestowed on
Tom, and how many sweeping bows he
favoured his illustrious visitors with. M'Variety
was a man in a chronic state of bankruptcy, but
who constantly arose, smiling and cheerful, as
though refreshed by ruin. There never was,
perhaps, a debtor who was so much beloved by
his creditors. Those to whom he owed most
were generally the first to help him to start
afresh. It was the opinion of the capitalist in
the wine trade—an opinion frequently expressed
as he signed the weekly cheques—that it was no
good crying after spilt milk; that a man could
not eat his cake and have it; that you could
not always be turning over your money ten
a year; and that there was a deal of meat
on M'Variety yet. "Sir," the enthusiastic
capitalist would exclaim, "if Ranelagh was to be
swallowed up by an earthquake next Saturday
night, Mac would have the neatest bill about
the ruins (as patronised by royalty) to be seen
at three o'clock in the afternoon and nine o'clock
at night, out in Sunday's paper, that ever you
saw. He is a man of spirit, sir, is Mac." So
the capitalist went on signing cheques and
sending in cases upon cases of the rose-pink
champagne.

M'Variety always looked after his small
liabilities, and let the large ones take care of
themselves. He who would owe much, and yet
live undisturbed, should always pay his
washer-woman. It is astonishing when you owe a man
thirty-seven thousand pounds to find how eager
he is to ask you to dinner, and to lend you
another three thousand pounds to make up the
round sum. Mac always paid his small people.
He never treated his underlings to an empty
treasury. The ghost walked regularly at Ranelagh
at three o'clock on Saturday afternoon, however
spare the promenaders on Friday night might have
been. Thus it came about that the small folks
loved M'Variety, and that the master carpenter,
to whom he had presented a silver snuff-box for
his exertions in getting up the firework
scaffolding for the panorama of Moscow, declared,
with tears in his eyes, that the governor was
the honestest soul he ever drove a nail for, and
that if timber ever ran short in the gardens, he'd
cut down Bushey Park (at the risk of
transportation for life) sooner than the governor
should want it. And finally, as Mac, whether it
was hail, rain, or sunshine with him, always
entertained a retinue of old pensioners, and took
great care of an old grandmother (who
considered him the brightest genius of any age)
and two spinster sisters down in Devonshire, he
was not, perhaps, on the whole, such a bad sort
of a fellow.

"Tiptoppers?" whispered the manager to his
friend, as he bustled officiously in advance of
his guests.

"The very first," Thomas returned. "An
earl, a baron, and a foreign count: no end of a
swell. The conceited puppy," he added,
mentally, to compensate for his slightly imaginative
eulogium on Edgar Greyfaunt. It was a
harmless peculiarity of our friend that he always
gave his aristocratic acquaintances a step in
rank. Thus, if you were a captain, he spoke of
you as colonel; if you were an archdeacon, he
made you a bishop.

"Sure I'm very much obliged to you, Tom,"
went on M'Variety. "Come and chop on
Sunday?"

"Thanks. Can't promise, but we'll see."

"Well, I know you will if some other swell
doesn't turn up. This way, gentlemen. You're
just in time for the circus. Just a goin' to
begin, as the showman said."

"Who is this Madame Ernestine, Mr.
M'Variety?" asked Sir William Long,
quitting Lord Carlton's arm to walk with the
manager.

"Famous French equestrian, my lord. Just