“Here’s your umbrella, Frere,” remarked Bracy, handing it to him as he spoke; “many thanks for the loan. I don’t wonder you are careful of it; it’s a most inestimable property, and has afforded me half-an-hour’s deep and tranquil enjoyment. But of all the pompous fools that ever walked this earth Grandeville is _facile princeps_.” “He’s no fool either,” returned Frere. “Then why does he behave as _sich?_” demanded Bracy. “His conceit and egotism are inconceivable. He’s a regular modern Cyclops; he has one great ‘I’ in the middle of his forehead, through the medium of which he looks at everything. One really feels an obligation to poke fun at that man. Well, I can’t accuse myself of neglect of duty in that particular, that’s a consolatory reflection; but he’s enough to convert the slowest old anchorite that ever chewed peas into a practical joker.” “He was severe on the excellent Lady Lombard,” observed his companion. “Did you not notice his remark about riches being respectable only when in the possession of ‘--ar--those connected with the old historical families of England’? That gave me a new idea.” “A thing always worth having, if but from its rarity,” replied Frere. “What was it?” “Why, it occurred to me what fun it would be to marry him to Lady Lombard--more particularly after his abuse of her to-day.” “A project more easy to conceive than to execute,” returned Frere, laughing. “I don’t know that,” answered Bracy confidently; “if I once set my mind on a thing, I generally contrive to accomplish it. It did not at first sight appear likely that De Grandeville would carry your old cotton umbrella through some of the most fashionable streets in London at three o’clock in the afternoon, yet you see he did it.” “You’re a remarkable man, my dear Bracy, and I have the greatest faith in your powers of management, but if you can induce Marmaduke de Grandeville to marry the widow of the pawnbroker and the pickle-man, you must be the very--well, never mind who--here we are at the Palaeontological.” So saying, Frere shook hands with Bracy, and the oddly consorted companions, between whom their very eccentricities appeared to constitute a bond of sympathy, each went his way, the practical joker to apply his acute intellect to the details of that mighty machine, the executive government of England, and the _savant_ to investigate the recently discovered small rib (it was only eight feet long) of a peculiar species of something-osaurus, the original proprietor of the rib being popularly supposed to have “lived and loved,” cut its awful teeth, and been gathered to its amphibious fossil forefathers two thousand years and some odd months before the creation of man. CHAPTER XXXVII.--WHEREIN IS FAITHFULLY DEPICTED THE CONSTANCY OF THE TURTLE-DOVE.