"None are growing elsewhere hereabouts for
me," smiled the dandy, lifting his hat for the
hundredth time to a passing party of ladies.

"Then what are you going to stop here for,
when it's time to go back to town?" Lord Carlton
pursued, elevating his eyebrows in pardonable
amazement. "Going to look at a horse?"

"No."

"Going to dine at Richmond?"—his lordship
said "Wichmond," but it would be both tedious
and indecorous to give typographical expression
to his defective linguals.

"No. I lunched very late, just before coming
down; and if I dine at all, it will not be till
night."

"Never mind, my boy, you'll get plenty of
supper at Crocky's," Mr. Jermyn here cut in.

A slight cloud passed across the white forehead
of the dandy, but he chased it away with an airy
toss of the head.

"Of which club," he blandly retorted, "Mr.
Jermyn is not, I fear, a member?"

"Got nothing but black balls," his lordship
added, by way of confirmation, and with a loud
chuckle. "Poor fellow, his proposer stayed
away, and his seconder came from Scotland on
purpose to pill him. There was one white
ball, but that was from a fellow who was short-
sighted, and popped his pill into the wrong side."

"Mr. Jermyn will have, I trust, better luck
next time," remarked Griffin. "Had I not been
in Paris——"

"At Frascati's?" interposed his noble friend.

"In Paris," he continued, taking no notice of
the interruption, "Mr. Jermyn might have
reckoned on my humble support. I should have
been delighted to find him one of us."

"Yes, I dare say you would," acquiesced Lord
Carlton. "Harry's a very good fellow, and has
plenty of feathers ready to be plucked, before
he is fit to be made into a compote de pigeons.
You'd have given him two white balls, I'm sure
you would, Griffin."

"Oh yes, I'm sure you would," repeated Mr.
Jermyn. The assurance was double-barrelled—
susceptible of two meanings. Mr. Henry Jermyn
hated the dandy for belonging to a club to which
he had himself failed to procure admittance,
although he well knew that the honorary co-
membership might prove in the long run costly
if not ruinous. Yet he would have jumped for
joy, had the exquisite addressed as Griffin offered
to propose him.

"Never mind, Harry," his good-natured lordship
observed. "Safe to get in next time. Can't
keep you out. Besides," he added, turning to
the dandy, "the fellows made a mistake after
all. They took Harry for big Jack Jermyn—you
know big Jack—the racing man who was in the
Eighth, and levanted after Newmarket the year
before last. They thought it was all up with
Jack, and didn't care about having a rook in the
dovecot. By Jove! If they knew that Harry
was to have all his grandmother's money—how
old is she, Harry?—he'd have been elected unanimously,
and received with a salute of twenty-one guns."

"Mr. Crockford must have shed tears when
informed of the sad truth," remarked the dandy,
with sardonic politeness. "However, fortune
will make amends. I hope to meet Mr. Jermyn
as a fellow-member at supper in St. James's-
street as soon after his grandmamma's decease
as possible. And the dandy, lifting his hat for
the hundred and tenth time that afternoon,
strolled away.

"Monsous well-preserved man, Griffin Blunt,"
Lord Carlton said, looking with careless
admiration after his retreating friend; "wears very
well. Must be forty, if he's a day."

"He looks queer about the eyes," Mr. Jermyn
ventured to observe, in mild disparagement.

"Late hours," explained his lordship, who
generally went to bed about four in the morning
and rose about three in the afternoon. "Griffin
is a shocking night-crow."

"What do they call him Griffin for, and who
is he?"

"How amazingly raw you. are!" exclaimed
his lordship, elevating his eyebrows in some
surprise. "Don't you know that Frank Blunt goes
by the name of Griffin, because he used to wear
a scaly green-silk coat when he drove his curricle
at the time of the Regency? Dooced queer
time it must have been, too, and dooced queer
fellows. Should have liked to belong to that
set, only they drank so dooced hard."

"Has he any money? How does he get his
living?"

"How should I know? P'r'aps he's his
grandmother's heir, if he hasn't sold the reversion.
You'd better ask him. He's apt to turn crusty
sometimes. He got that scar on his cheek in
'15, in a duel with a French dragoon officer in
Paris. Griffin Blunt was in garrison at
Versailles, and came up to dine in the Palais Royal,
and the dragoon picked a quarrel with him about
Waterloo—they were always picking quarrels,
those French fellows, at that time—and Griffin
knocked him down; and then they fought with
sabres in the Bois de Vincennes, and Griffin had
his pretty face laid open; but, by Jove! he killed
the dragoon."

"And what does he do now?"

"What a lot of questions you ask! I'm not
his godfathers and his godmothers. I believe he
sold out after the peace, and went to India to
grow indigo, or buy opium, or shake the pagoda-
tree, or something of that sort. Well, he came
back, and he's been on town these ten years; at
least, I've known him ever since I came up from
Oxford."

"Est-il mauvais sujet?" Mr. Jermyn asked.

"I believe he's about as bad as bad can be,"
coolly replied Lord Carlton. " He's worse than
I am, and that's saying a good deal."

"And about his money?"

"Don't know anything about it. He lives
high, and must spend three thousand a year.
Charming little house in Curzon-street. Goes