This ejection from my own mansion took place about half past nine o’clock. In the first impulses of my rage and despair, I resolved to apply to my friends, in order to establish my identity by their testimonies. It was early; too early in fact to find any of them up, and I was fain to stroll the streets until the lingering hands of the clock should signify the proper and canonical hour of rising. So I patrolled Hyde Park for an hour or so, until my insides began to give me very unequivocal tokens of their desire for breakfast. Rage, as well as love and all other sublunary matters, must yield to the calls of hunger. I entered a coffee-house in Upper Brook street, and ordered my morning meal. I drank a couple of cups of tea, ate a French roll and a modicum of raw beefsteak, and walked to the bar to pay my bill. I put my hand into my pocket in search of my purse. It was not there. I tried another, and another, and yet another pocket. Horrid to relate, I could not meet with the smallest coin of the realm! The waiter began to look very black, and I could overhear the monosyllable “_bilk_” ground out between his teeth in a tone which indicated profound aversion and contempt. My hair fairly stood on end. Nevertheless I thought it best to brazen it out. “Do you see, my good fellow,” said I, and I assure you, I spoke in a very bland and courteous tone, “I have most unaccountably forgotten my purse—” “Gammon!” was the very significant response of the Ganymede. “How d’ye know you ever had one?” “Confound your impudence, fellow!” said I, nettled by the coolness of the query. “What d’ ye mean by insulting a gentleman?” “More like a swell out o’ luck,” growled the servitor. “Come, young ’un, this here kind of a job’s no go. Post the cole, my boy, or it’ll be the worse for somebody.” As luck would have it, I thought of my diamond breastpin, and taking that article of jewelry from my shirt front, I offered it to the waiter. “Blast your Brummagem traps!” quoth that gentleman. “D’ ye think I don’t know a diamond from a Bristol stone, or gold from pinchbeck?” It was pinchbeck, by Jupiter! The waiter must have been touched by the despair depicted upon my countenance. With a grim smile, “Come, my fine chap,” said he, “if you are a bilk, it’s plain that you’re a new hand at the trade, and I don’t care about being too hard upon you. Give me your wipe, and I’ll let you off for this time, but you take care you doesn’t come the swell mob again over this ’ere house, that’s all.” My heart was too full for speech. I gave him my handkerchief with a profound sigh, and throwing the pinchbeck breastpin into the coal-scuttle, I vanished with all convenient speed. Leaving the coffee-house, I espied my crony, Dick Buffers, across the street. To join him was but the work of a moment.