HALF A MILLION OF MONEY.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "BARBARA'S HISTORY."

CHAPTER XVI. THE ERECTHEUM.

"No, by Jove, Brandon, not a bit of a snob!
As green as an Arcadian, but no more of a snob
than . . . ."

Sir Charles Burgoyne was going to say, "than
you are;" but he changed his mind, and said,
instead:

"—than Castletowers himself."

"I call any man a snob who quotes Bion and
Moschus in his familiar talk," replied the other,
all unconscious of his friend's hesitation. "How
the deuce is one to remember anything about
Bion and Moschus? and what right has he to
make a fellow look like a fool?"

"Unfeeling, I admit," replied Sir Charles,
languidly.

"I hate your learned people," said Brandon,
irritably. "And I hate parvenus. Ignorant
parvenus are bad enough; but learned parvenus
are the worst of all. He's both—hang him!"

"Hang him, by all means!" said another
young man, approaching the window at which
the two were standing. "May I ask who he is,
and what he has done?"

It was in one of the princely reading-rooms of
the Erectheum Club, Pall-Mall. The two first
speakers were the Honourable Edward Brandon,
third and youngest son of Hardicanute,
fourteenth Earl of Ipswich, and Sir Charles
Burgoyne, Baronet, of the Second Life Guards.

There are men whom nature seems to have run
up by contract, and the Honourable Edward
Brandon was one of them. He was just like one
of those slight, unsubstantial, fashionable houses
that spring up every day like mushrooms about
Bayswater and South Kensington, and are hired
under the express condition of never being
danced in. He was very young, very tall, and as
economically supplied with brain and muscle as
a man could well be. The very smallest
appreciable weight of knowledge would have broken
down his understanding at any moment; and his
little ornaments of manner were all in the flimsiest
modern taste, and of the merest stucco. He
"dipped" occasionally into Bell's Life and the
Court Circular. He had read half of the first
volume of Mr. Soapey Sponge's Sporting Tour.
He played croquet pretty well, and billiards very
badly, and was saturated through and through
with smoke, like a Finnan haddock.

Sir Charles Burgoyne was a man of a very
different stamp. He was essentially one of a class;
but then, ethnologically speaking, his class was
many degrees higher than that of Mr. Brandon.
He was better built, and better furnished. He
rode well; was a good shot; played a first rate
game at billiards; was gifted with a certain lazy
impertinence of speech and manner that passed
for wit, and was so effeminately fair of
complexion and regular of feature, that he was
popularly known among his brother-officers as
the Beauty.

The last comer—short, sallow, keen-eyed,
somewhat flippant in his address, and showy in
his attire—was Laurence Greatorex, Esquire,
only son, heir, and partner of Sir Samuel Greatorex,
Knight, the well known banker and alderman
of Lombard-street, City.

"Hang him, by all means!" said this gentleman,
with charming impartiality. "Who is he?
and what has he done?"

"We were speaking of the new member,"
replied Brandon.

"What, Crœsus Trefalden? Pshaw! the
man's an outer barbarian. What social enormity
has he been committing now?"

"He's been offending Brandon's delicate sense
of propriety by quoting Greek," said the Beauty.

"Greek! Unpardonable offence. What shall
we do to him? Muzzle him?"

"Condemn him to feed on Greek roots for the
term of his natural life, like Timon of Athens,"
suggested the Beauty, lazily.

"He's little better than a savage, as it is,"
said Mr. Greatorex, with a contemptuous shrug
of the shoulders. " He knows nothing of life,
and cares nothing for it either. Last Tuesday,
when all the fellows were wild about the great
fight down at Barney's Croft, he sat and read
Homer, as if it were the news of the day. He's
an animated anachronism—that's what he is, Sir
Charles."

"Who the deuce is he?" ejaculated Brandon.
"Where does he come from?"

"Heaven knows. His father was a black-letter
folio, I believe, and his mother a palimpsest."