THE old ballroom of the famous Daish's Rooms looked mighty cheerful on the evening of my Lady Bunbutter's rout and Mr. Francis Vernon's farewell entertainment.

The circular mahogany table with finely carved claw legs shone like the fine old piece of Spanish wood it was, that is to say, wherever it could secure a clear space for shining, being almost entirely clouded over by innumerable dishes of gruit and nuts, plates, silver knives and silver forks, two large horns of snuff and half-dozen pairs of branched candlesticks, while in the very centre surrounded by lesser fruits stood a magnificent pineapple.

Round the table stood a dozen or more solid Windsor wheelback chairs that were warranted to stand firm, though the fattest gentleman that ever sat down to dessert tipped perpetually back on them to the utmost limit of his balance. A magnificent fire blazed and roared in the hearth, and round the walls were hung prints of racehorses, cock-fights, steeplechases, prize bullocks, and fat sheep, with bills of sale beneath them and announcements of forthcoming diversions for the young gentlemen of the Blue Boar and the more wealthy agriculturalists of the neighbourhood.

It was ten o'clock of a wet windy night and the chairmen were growing quarrelsome as they stamped up and down in the street below.

Mr. Jeremy Daish had been rather unwilling for Mr. Vernon to give his party on a night when he himself would be unable to superintend the commissariat owing to his services being required for my Lady Bunbutter's rout close at hand. However, he had left the strictest injunctions with John the senior waiter to carry off at once all empty bottles in order to the protection of the Curtain Wells watch, which was wont to suffer considerably in their persons on such an hilarious occasion as a party in the old ballroom of Daish's Rooms.

The host stood with his back to the fire complacently surveying the preparations. Vernon's extraction was somewhat ambiguous, and his father may or may not have been the fine gentleman that his mother swore he was. So, as he stood regarding the well-covered table and the tall armchair at the head of it where he would presently take his seat, a distinct feeling of elation seized him at the prospect of being in a position to pass the decanter round a circle of such undeniable breeding. He went over their names—names famous on many a battlefield and many a hunting field. They belonged to a world of broad acres and park gates and double lodges and Corinthian hunting-boxes. They were revered at home by many peasants and wore the mantle of life with an air of easy proprietorship. They possessed something like the dignified stability of the Church of England. They were a force, an institution, a product of insular civilization. In fact, they were English Gentlemen, and Mr. Vernon contemplated their existence with great self-satisfaction. He, too, was an English Gentleman, he reassured himself. It was the consciousness of being one which gave him that pleasant sense of superiority to the rest of the world when he found himself in the congenial company of his peers.

Yet poor Mr. Vernon (I am rather sorry for poor Mr. Vernon) could not conceal from his shrewd self that he had no business to be at all unduly elated at the prospect of entertaining young Tom Chalkley of the Foot, Lieutenant Blewforth of the Lively, Mr. Harry Golightly of Campbell's Grey Dragoons, Mr. Anthony Clare, little Peter Wingfield, Jack Winnington, the Honourable Mr. Harthe-Brusshe, my Lord Squall, Lord Augustus Wind and Mr. Charles Lovely.

It was Mr. Vernon's note of invitation to the last which had caused him to d—— Vernon's hazel eyes, in the taproom of the World turned Upside Down. Presently came a sound of laughter and careless talk as the young gentlemen of the Blue Boar came swaggering in. Was it merely a sense of eccentricity that made the host fancy he detected a note of condescension in their loud and jovial greeting to himself? Probably.

The early guests talked, as early guests always will, with half an eye on the clock and the other half on the table.

"Squall is late," said Vernon.

"Squall coming?" inquired Blewforth.

"L-l-ook out for squalls," stammered little Peter Wingfield.

"Squall's an ass," said Mr. Golightly.

"So is his brother," said Chalkley.

"Always was," said Clare.

"Wind is coming too," said Vernon. "Augustus, that is, and Harthe-Brusshe."

The young gentlemen of the Blue Boar looked peevish; it was tactless of that fellow Vernon to keep them waiting for three such asses as these.

"They are late," said Blewforth very emphatically.

"I'm expecting Lovely, too," said Vernon almost humbly. Somehow or other he felt the slightest inclination to apologize, exactly what for he did not know.

"Charles is always late. He's a d——d careless fellow," said Mr. Golightly, and one felt the final judgment upon Charles had been passed.

"Charles is not jigging with old Butterbun, is he?" asked little Peter Wingfield.

"Oh! the d——l! not he," said Blewforth. "He's found a red-cheeked hussy with whom he's carrying on an intrigue."

"Eh, what! Never?" exclaimed a chorus.

"What's his charmer's name?" said Chalkley.

"Burgundy," replied Blewforth with a great guffaw that made all the glasses and goblets and decanters on the big oak dresser ring an echo.

"I never thought Charles cared much for wine or women," said Golightly.

"Nor he don't," Blewforth put in. "Nor he don't. That's what beats me. But I tell you I saw Charles Lovely sitting in the taproom of the World Turned Upside Down. Nobody goes there unless he wishes to be drunk by nightfall. Eh, boys? So depend on't when Charles does arrive, he'll arrive drunk. But why? That's the riddle."

"Perhaps the fair Courteen has slighted him," said Chalkley. "Serve him right. He had no business to take himself so seriously. 'Tis very fashionable to be a poet, but egad! 'tis devilish low to behave like one."

"Is that Miss Phyllida Courteen?" said Vernon, trying to speak as though he had read her name in the list of visitors published every week by the proprietors of the Curtain Wells Chronicle and Pump Room Intelligencer.

"Aye! d'ye know her? Blooming seventeen with a short upper lip, blue eyes and hair the colour of that chestnut gelding, What's His Name sold 'tother day."

"Very poor animal," said Golightly.

"Not at all. I disagree with you."

"Very poor animal indeed," said Golightly.

"It fetched a very pretty price."

"Oh," said Mr. Golightly and the argument was over.

"Does she carry a white swansdown muff?" asked Vernon.

"Who?"

"Miss Courteen."

"Eh? Oh! I don't know," and since Mr. Chalkley's tone of voice implied a lack of further interest on the subject, the subject was dropped.

"My belief is," said Lieutenant Blewforth loudly, and moving as he spoke in the direction of the fireplace. "Egad, Vernon would you take it unkind if I rang for a tankard of ale? I'm as dry as a gunner in action. My belief is," he went on spreading his coat-tails to the genial warmth, "my belief is——"

"Gadslife! B-B-lewforth," interrupted Peter Wingfield, "pray get on with the recitation of your c-creed."

"Don't get excited, little man," said Blewforth. "My belief is Charles wrote that book."

"What book?" said Chalkley, whose acquaintance with the literature of the day was remarkably small.

"Curtain Polls."

"Never heard of it," said Mr. Chalkley.

"Rubbish!" said Clare, entering suddenly into the conversation. "Rubbish!" and yet Mr. Anthony Clare was one of the two people in the room who knew for certain that Charles was, indeed, the author of that satirical trifle.

"It has caused a terrible amount of talk," Blewforth went on. "My old aunt Seaworthy to whom I paid my annual visit yesterday tells me that all the world is very much hurt at being treated with such freedom."

"I d-don't see why Charles should take to drink because he's wrote a book." This was from Peter Wingfield.

"Ripple may have been annoyed. He's confoundedly touchy about a little matter like that and Charles thinks Ripple is a demigod."

The Earl of Squall, Lord Augustus Wind and the Honourable Mr. Harthe-Brusshe came into the room at that moment, and Mr. Vernon, who had been feeling a little outside the intimacy of the company, made haste to propose that, everybody save Charles being present, the wine should be brought in.

Everybody agreed that nothing fitted in more exactly with their wishes than Mr. Vernon's timely suggestion and everybody selected his chair with that preciseness which stamps the beginning of an entertainment. Everybody sat down and the nuts were circulated.

Presently John entered with twelve quart-bottles of Burgundy on a huge tray. All of them had been gently warmed before a slow fire, and all of them were wiped clean of the cobwebs and dust of the several years spent in the ample cellars of the Blue Boar.

Vernon had prepared a short oration for the entrance of the liquor and while John reverently stationed a bottle at everybody's right hand, he made haste to deliver it. Perhaps his utterance was a shade too reminiscent of one of the many prologues spoken by his mother at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, but that did not matter since nobody in the room was old enough to remember that lady's inimitable delivery of Mr. Dryden's rhymed Alexandrines.

"The life of Burgundy," said Mr. Vernon, "is very like the life of a butterfly. At first the grape or caterpillar-grub, feeding upon the richness of the soil, then the cocoon or bottle stage when it languishes for many years in darkness below the earth until—until it emerges glowing with a thousand varied tints of crimson—and, like a butterfly, wings its airy way into the brain of mankind."

The company, with the exception of my Lord Squall who was sometimes taken in the old family coach of the Winds to hear his father speak in the House of Lords, were not accustomed to lengthy speeches and looked at each other bashfully.

Lieutenant Blewforth with nautical tact saved the situation by drinking Mr. Vernon's health in a very large and brimming pint bumper which he emptied in two sonorous gulps.

As everybody else proceeded to follow this good example, everybody was soon very cheerful, and the advent of the second dozen of bottles was mightily applauded.

However, the master mind was still absent and the drinking, though steady, had not yet enlivened the company to uproarious spirits.

"Where's Charles?" bellowed Blewforth munching a devilled biscuit. "Where's that fellow Charles. Demme! He'll never catch us up at this rate and we shall have him sober as a post-captain when we are beginning to amuse ourselves."

"What, you rogue," cried our hero entering just as the Lieutenant bellowed his inquiry. "I wager five guineas, I am two bottles ahead of any gentleman present." In order to clinch the bet he flung his purse in the direction of the table. The gauntlet snuffed in its course two of the candles and fell with a plump into a piping bowl of punch splashing Tom Chalkley as high as his stock and imparting to His Majesty's uniform an odour of hot squeezed lemons that lasted for quite a couple of weeks.

"Charles! Charles!" bellowed the burly Lieutenant, "Huzza for Charles!"

The latter lurched into the vacant chair next to his friend Tony without a word to the host. However, nobody observed this breach of good manners, because everybody was anxiously leaning over to fill every glass in reach of the newcomer as a preliminary to drinking his very good health a score of times, without a heeltap to any one of them.

"Z—ds! Charles. Where have you been?" said Chalkley.

"Drinking old Burgundy with a rogue of a bagman who looked like Ranelagh Garden en FÊte, for his face was illuminated with every hue of crimson lamp and I stake my wig his nose was as large and round as the Rotunda."

With the arrival of Charles, everybody woke up and there were calls for a song. The gallant Lieutenant was the first to respond with my Lord Dorset's To you fair ladies now at Land.

Let me remind you of that fine old ballad:

"Not at all," cried Charles.

"and chorus, gentlemen, please,"

and so on to the last

And a proper noise everybody made with the Fa la-la-la-la accentuating every Fa with a bottle and every La with one of Mr. Jeremy Daish's handsome silver spoons.

The song being a very lengthy one allowed everybody plenty of time to drink another quart of Burgundy before its rousing conclusion, and if the company cheered loudly at the beginning, by heavens, they cheered so loudly at the end that the noise was heard above the fiddlers in the new ballroom of Daish's famous Rooms and put everybody out of step in the last Cotillon notwithstanding the heroick efforts of the disreputable, but nimble-footed Captain Mann.

Then Charles gave a new ballad (new that is in the reign of Queen Anne) sung first at Messieurs Brook and Hellier's Club at the Temple Tavern in Fleet Street, but slightly altered by him to suit present company,

(with chorus of last two lines repeated).

and so on until

"Ah!" said Mr. Antony Clare whose father had been a Jacobite, "you've spoilt more than the rhyme by the last word."

This treasonable remark was the signal for more noise than ever because all the young gentlemen of the Blue Boar who held His Majesty King George's commission felt bound to uphold the honour of the Royal Navy and the British Army by flinging a large number of Spanish nuts at the head of the disloyal Clare who retorted by emptying a whole ram's horn of snuff over Mr. Golightly so that for a while nothing was to be heard but vollies of gigantick sneezes. Exhaustion reigned for a moment, but presently the sound of hustling and bustling in the street outside roused everybody to fresh vigour of mischief.

My Lady Bunbutter's rout was over, and those of the Exquisite Mob who had been invited were standing on tiptoe on the steps of Daish's Rooms peering into the darkness and blinking in the glare of waving flambeaux. The chairmen were so busy quarrelling over their positions that they paid no attention to their fares and everything was in a very great state of confusion indeed; nor was the clamour abated by Mr. Lovely cleverly hitting the long red ear of the nearest chairmen with a Barcelona nut because the injured chairman instantly floored a linkboy who was standing by his side and the linkboy's torch severely burnt the legs of Lord Cinderton's tall footman in his ash-grey livery and the tall footman with a yell of dismay punched a flat-footed waiter on the nose and the flat-footed waiter butted an inoffensive fop in the middle of his sprigged silk waistcoat and the inoffensive fop struck out with his tasselled cane left and right with such force that presently everybody in the street below was fighting with his next door neighbour to the entire delight of the young gentlemen from the Blue Boar. Their next diversion was to empty the dregs of the Burgundy bottles upon the heads of the crowd, whereupon all the ladies of Curtain Wells screamed very loud to see such a number of bloody polls and faces.

Then Charles snatched off little Peter Wingfield's tie-wig and, having set fire to it, began to drop tufts of burning hair out of the window, which tufts made an immense smell and blew round and round in the gusty March air in a very alarming manner.

Little Peter Wingfield, having lost his own wig and being too little to snatch Lovely's wig, mounted one of the stout Windsor wheelback chairs and, taking down the print of a famous cock-fight extracted the hook from the wall and laid an embargo on the black silk ties of three of his friends in order to fish from the window for another wig. He succeeded in catching the Marquis of Hurricane's to the intense delight of his undutiful sons the Earl of Squall and Lord Augustus Wind. Of course after such a successful display of angling, everybody else had to try his hand with the picture hook and two more wigs were captured but proved so frowsy that they were burnt immediately. However, Mr. Chalkley caught the hem of Lady Jane Vane's petticoat just as she was stepping into her chair and would without doubt have injured that virgin's modest reputation for ever, had the garment been made of more durable stuff; as it was, the hook would not hold and nothing was disclosed beyond what is allowed by any wet day.

Then Mr. Daish came hurrying in and begged their honours to desist because the watch was coming, and what Mr. Ripple would say when he heard of the riot he did not dare surmize.

Poor Mr. Daish bowed and scraped and was so full of excuses that all the young gentlemen felt quite sorry for him and put ham seat foremost into the biggest bowl of punch in order to drown his troubles, whereupon Mr. Daish grew quite cholerick and vowed he would never let one of 'em enter his inn again and made such ado that the culprits all protested he was more noisy than anybody else, and offered to fetch in the watch and have him arrested in his own bowl of punch.

But presently they lifted him out and subscribed ten guineas by sending round Mr. Golightly's hat; and poor Mr. Daish was more full of excuses than ever and hoped that anything he had said that could by the most spirited gentleman be considered derogatory would be forgiven and ascribed to the dismay caused by the hot punch scalding his hinder parts and goading him beyond the bounds of polite remonstrance.

Everybody vowed that withered little Daish was a prince of good fellows and begged him to buy himself a new pair of cinnamon cloth breeches as soon as possible, while Thomas Chalkley of the Foot created much amusement by shouting that he was holding Dunquerque against the French. In order to hold Dunquerque against the French, it was very necessary that Mr. Chalkley should fling out of the window nineteen quart-bottles of Burgundy in quick succession, whereupon Lieutenant Blewforth of the Lively not to be outdone vowed Portobello must be taken and proceeded to take it by climbing with amazing dexterity on to the mantelpiece armed only with a long Churchwarden's pipe. Yet notwithstanding all the efforts of Ensign Chalkley to hold Dunquerque against the French, notwithstanding that he was valiantly assisted by Cornet Golightly of the Grey Dragoons, who led a desperate cavalry charge round the whole room mounted upon one of the stout Windsor chairs, Dunquerque capitulated. In other words the dignified Curtain Wells watch marched upstairs with their lanterns and their staves and, standing in a knot by the doorway, demanded the reason for such a riotous breach of the King's peace, not to mention Mr. Ripple's and the Mayor's. But the young gentlemen were all so merry and the watch was so cold that it consented to taste the punch and presently left Dunquerque in the hands of the Allies and marched off warmer in mind and body to a quieter quarter of the ancient borough of Curtain Wells. I am sorry to add that, in passing the door of the Great House, they so far forgot their standing orders as to cry with enormous fervour the hour and the weather exactly underneath Mr. Ripple's window.

With the departure of the watch, peace fell upon the company for a while; a dice box was produced and some packs of cards, but play lasted a very short time and was voted too confoundedly dull for so joyful an evening. So more songs were sung, and it was exceedingly pleasant to hear these young gentlemen shouting the refrains and hammering Encores upon the polished mahogany table. It was exceedingly pleasant to see the wigs on their knees and the long clay pipes keeping time to the tune; but perhaps the pleasantest sight of all was the two sleepy waiters who leaned against the jambs of the door and, with kindly grins on their tired faces, tapped their flat feet to the more alluring measures.

The night was wearing away when somebody called 'Vernon for a song!'

The latter, to tell the truth, had felt out of his element, except during the brief interval of play, but on being called upon to occupy the centre of the room, he cheered up and announced his very great pleasure in acceding to the gentlemen's request.

I wonder if you are at all sorry for Mr. Vernon.

He was very lonely sitting in his high armchair at the head of the table. I wonder if you will forgive him for singing this song, which you will find in Mr. D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy.

The words were poor, as you will allow, and the tune a mere tinkle, but it had the effect of rousing our hero from the half-sleep into which he had fallen.

"Sing that song again, will you."

"G—— forbid," whispered little Peter Wingfield.

"Nay, sir," said Mr. Vernon, "'Tis too long to sing over again, but I'll toast the heroine if that will please your zest."

"No, sir," said Charles, "it will not please me at all."

The rest of the company began to wake up to the fact that something was happening.

"I should have thought," Vernon replied, "that Mr. Lovely would have cordially welcomed such a toast, for we all know his partiality to the name."

"Gentlemen," said our hero. Did I not promise you some pretty heroicks a score of pages back? "Gentlemen, I have a tale to tell you."

Charles looked very stiff and very fierce as, clapping on his wig, he began:

"A short while ago I perpetrated an indiscretion in mistaking Mr. Francis Vernon for a gentleman, for which I beg the pardon of everybody present. Mr. Vernon for some reason best known to himself saw fit to bribe my bookseller to insert in a volume I have just published twelve scurrilous lines reflecting upon the character of a young lady whom I—whom I——"

"Admire," suggested our villain.

"No, sir, respect."

"Sir, your virtue should make us all blush," sneered Vernon, cold and contemptuous.

"D—— n you and your blushes; blush deeper, then," shouted Charles, slinging the contents of a wineglass into Mr. Vernon's pallid face.

There was silence for a moment until the honourable Mr. Harthe-Brusshe proclaimed——

"The affair should be settled at once."

And this was the only remark that the Honourable gentleman uttered in the whole of the evening.

"With all my heart," cried Charles. "Tony, you'll act for me?"

Mr. Vernon had delicately wiped his face with a handkerchief of Mechlin lace. A single drop of the wine lingered above his left cheekbone. There, it was not unbecoming.

"I shall be proud to walk with Mr. Lovely in a month's time," said our villain, "but for the present my honour is pledged to a lady."

"Sure, you borrow on mighty small security, sir," said Charles.

The lingering drop of wine that stained Mr. Vernon's cheek seemed to expand for a brief moment.

"I have named my day," was all he answered.

"Mr. Vernon is within his rights, Charles," said Mr. Golightly, "and moreover the weather will be finer next month and we can make up a jovial party."

"'Tis hardly fair to poor Daish to fight in his rooms," said Blewforth. "Ripple would put his shutters up at once."

"H—— take you all," cried Charles, in an access of fury, as he sprang to strike Vernon.

The latter stepped back and with a well-aimed blow sent Charles flying backwards over two chairs.

"'Slife, Charles," said Mr. Golightly very stiffly. "Your conduct is d——d irregular, Sir."

"Most improper," said Mr. Chalkley.

"Devilish unrestrained," said little Peter Wingfield.

"Charles was two bottles ahead of us, gentlemen," said Blewforth who held a broad mind in a broad body.

Our hero was still lying where Vernon had sent him among cards and broken glass.

"D—— n you all," cried Clare. "Charles is worth the rest of you puppies in red and blue coats put together, and by G——, Mr. Vernon, he shall kill you for that blow."

Everybody was so surprized to hear Mr. Anthony Clare, cool and placid Tony Clare, break out like this that a wave of embarrassment swept over the room. One by one they hurried from the scene of such an irregular quarrel.

It was very entertaining to see them march out so stiff and straight, with nutshells crackling underneath their feet.