CHAPTER XXVII.

A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS.

We had the fish, which, as the kind reader may remember, I had brought down in a delicate attention to Mrs. Ponto, to variegate the repast of next day; and cod and oyster sauce, twice laid, salt cod and scolloped oysters, formed parts of the bill of fare; until I began to fancy that the Ponto family, like our late revered monarch George II., had a fancy for stale fish. And about this time the pig being consumed, we began upon a sheep.

But how shall I forget the solemn splendour of a second course, which was served up in great state by Stripes in a silver dish and cover, a napkin twisted round his dirty thumbs; and consisted of a landrail, not much bigger than a corpulent sparrow.

"My love, will you take any game?" says Ponto, with prodigious gravity; and stuck his fork into that little mouthful of an island in the silver sea. Stripes, too, at intervals, dribbled out the Marsala with a solemnity which would have done honour to a Duke's butler. The Barmecide's dinner to Shacabac was only one degree removed from these solemn banquets.

As there were plenty of pretty country places close by; a comfortable country town, with good houses of gentlefolks; a beautiful old parsonage, close to the church whither we went, (and where the Carabas family have their ancestral carved and monumented gothic pew,) and every appearance of good society in the neighbourhood, I rather wondered we were not enlivened by the appearance of some of the neighbours at the Evergreens, and asked about them.

"We can't in our position of life-we can't well associate with the attorney's family, as I leave you to suppose," said Mrs. Ponto, confidentially. "Of course not," I answered, though I didn't know why. "And the Doctor?" said I.

"A most excellent worthy creature," says Mrs. P., "saved Maria's life-really a learned man; but what can one do in one's position? One may ask one's medical man to one's table certainly but his family, my dear Mr. Snob!"

"Half a dozen little gallipots," interposed Miss Wirt, the governess: he, he, he! and the young ladies laughed in chorus.

con

"We only live with the country families," Miss Wirt * tinued, tossing up her head. "The Duke is abroad: we are at feud with the Carabases; the Ringwoods don't come down till Christmas in fact, nobody's here till the hunting seasonpositively nobody."

:

"Whose is the large red house just outside of the town?"

"What! the château-calicot? he, he, he! That purse-proud ex-linendraper, Mr. Yardley, with the yellow liveries, and the wife in red velvet? How can you, my dear Mr. Snob, be so satirical? The impertinence of those people is really something quite overwhelming."

"Well, then, there is the parson, Doctor Chrysostom. He's a gentleman, at any rate."

At this Mrs. Ponto looked at Miss Wirt. met and they had wagged their heads at each

After their eyes had

other, they looked up to the ceiling. So did the young ladies. They thrilled. It was evident I had said something very terrible. Another black sheep in the Church? thought I, with a little sorrow; for I don't care to own that I have a respect for the cloth.

there's nothing wrong ?"

"I-I hope

"Wrong?" says Mrs. P. clasping her hands with a tragic air. "Oh!" says Miss Wirt, and the two girls, gasping in chorus. Well," says I, "I'm very sorry for it. I never saw a nicerlooking old gentleman, or a better school, or heard a better sermon."

"He used to preach those sermons in a surplice," hissed out Mrs. Ponto. "He's a Puseyite, Mr. Snob."

"Heavenly powers!" says I, admiring the pure ardour of these

* I have since heard that this aristocratic lady's father was a livery-button maker in St. Martin's Lane where he met with misfortunes, and his daughter acquired her taste for heraldry. But it may be told to her credit, that out of her earnings she has kept the bed-ridden old bankrupt in great comfort and secrecy at Pentonville; and furnished her brother's outfit for the Cadetship which her patron, Lord Swigglebiggle, gave her when he was at the Board of Control. I have this information from a friend. To hear Miss Wirt herself, you would fancy that her Papa was a Rothschild, and that the markets of Europe were convulsed when he went into the Gazette.

female theologians; and Stripes came in with the tea. It's so weak that no wonder Ponto's sleep isn't disturbed by it.

Of mornings we used to go out shooting. We had Ponto's own fields to sport over (where we got the fieldfare), and the nonpreserved part of the Hawbuck property: and one evening, in a stubble of Ponto's, skirting the Carabas woods, we got among some pheasants, and had some real sport. I shot a hen, I know, greatly to my delight. Bag it," says Ponto, in rather a hurried manner, "here's somebody coming." So I pocketed the bird.

"You infernal poaching thieves!" roars out a man from the hedge in the garb of a gamekeeper. "I wish I could catch you on this side of the hedge. I'd put a brace of barrels into you, that I would."

"Curse that Snapper," says Ponto, moving off; "he's always watching me like a spy."

"Carry off the birds, you sneaks, and sell 'em to London," roars the individual, who it appears was a keeper of Lord Carabas. "You'll get six shillings a brace for 'em."

"You know the price of 'em well enough, and so does your master too, you scoundrel," says Ponto, still retreating. "We kills 'em on our ground," cries Mr. Snapper.

"We don't

set traps for other people's birds. We're no decoy ducks. We're no sneaking poachers. We don't shoot 'ens, like that ere Cockney, who's got the tail of one a-sticking out of his pocket. Only just come across the hedge, that's all."

"I tell you what," says Stripes, who was out with us as keeper this day, (in fact he's keeper, coachman, gardener, valet, and bailiff, with Tummus under him,) "if you'll come across, John Snapper, and take your coat off, I'le give you such a wapping as you've never had since the last time I did it at Guttlebury Fair."

"Wap one of your own weight," Mr. Snapper said, whistling his dogs and disappearing into the wood. And so we came out of this controversy rather victoriously; but I began to alter my preconceived ideas of rural felicity.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS.

"BE hanged to your aristocrats!" Ponto said, in some conversation we had regarding the family at Carabas, between whom and the Evergreens there was a feud,-" When I first came into the County-it was the year before Sir John Buff contested in the Blue interest-the Marquis, then Lord St. Michaels, who, of course, was Orange to the core, paid me and Mrs. Ponto such attentions, that I fairly confess I was taken in by the old humbug, and thought that I'd met with a rare neighbour. 'Gad, Sir, we used to get pines from Carabas, and pheasants from Carabas, and it was- Ponto, when will you come over and shoot?'-and'Ponto, our pheasants want thinning,'-and my Lady would insist upon her dear Mrs. Ponto coming over to Carabas to sleep, and put me I don't know to what expense for turbans and velvet gowns for my wife's toilette. Well, Sir, the election takes place, and though I was always a Liberal, personal friendship of course induces me to plump for St. Michaels, who comes in at the head of the poll. Next year, Mrs. P. insists upon going to town-with lodgings in Clarges Street at ten pounds a-week, with a hired Brougham, and new dresses for herself and the girls, and the deuce and all to pay. Our first cards were to Carabas House; my Lady's are returned by a great big flunky: and I leave you to fancy my poor Betsy's discomfiture as the lodging-house maid took in the cards, and Lady St. Michaels drives away, though she actually saw us at the drawing-room window. Would you believe it, Sir, that though we called four times afterwards those infernal aristocrats never returned our visit; that though Lady St. Michaels gave nine dinner-parties and four déjeûners that season, she never asked us to one; and that she cut us dead at the Opera, though Betsy was nodding to her the whole night. We wrote to her for tickets for Almack's; she writes to say that all hers were promised; and said, in the presence of Wiggins, her lady's-maid, who told it to Diggs, my wife's woman, that she couldn't conceive how people in our station of life could so far forget themselves as to

wish to appear in any such place! Go to Castle Carabas! I'd sooner die than set my foot in the house of that impertinent, insolvent, insolent jackanapes-and I hold him in scorn!" After this, Ponto gave me some private information regarding Lord Carabas's pecuniary affairs; how he owed money all over the County; how Jukes the carpenter was utterly ruined and couldn't get a shilling of his bill; how Biggs the butcher hanged himself for the same reason; how the six big footmen never received a guinea of wages, and Snaffle, the state coachman, actually took off his blown-glass whig of ceremony and flung it at Lady Carabas's feet on the Terrace before the Castle; all which stories, as they are private, I do not think proper to divulge. But these details did not stifle my desire to see the famous mansion of Castle Carabas, nay, possibly excited my interest to know more about that lordly house and its owners.

At the entrance of the park, there are a pair of great gaunt mildewed lodges-mouldy Doric temples with black chimney-pots in the finest classic taste, and the gates of course are surmounted by the chats bottés, the well-known supporters of the Carabas family. "Give the lodge-keeper a shilling," says Ponto, (who drove me near to it in his four-wheeled cruelty-chaise), "I warrant it's the first piece of ready money he has received for some time." I don't know whether there was any foundation for this sneer, but the gratuity was received with a curtsey, and the gate opened for me to enter. "Poor old porteress!" says I, inwardly. "You little know that it is the Historian of Snobs whom you let in ?" The gates were passed. A damp green stretch of park spread right and left immeasurably, confined by a chilly grey wall, and a damp long straight road between two huge rows of moist, dismal lime-trees, leads up to the Castle. In the midst of the park is a great black tank or lake, bristling over with rushes, and here and there covered over with patches of pea-soup. A shabby temple rises on an island in this delectable lake, which is approached by a rotten barge that lies at roost in a dilapidated boat-house. Clumps of elms and oaks dot over the huge green flat. Every one of them would have been down long since, but that the Marquis is not allowed to cut the timber.