The proprietor of such “a trap,” as he would probably call it, could not fail to be a study in himself. Loud accents from within smote on my ear as I approached the bar. The shrill tones of Miss Lushington’s voice predominated, and I gathered from this that she had recovered her good-humour, which for the last few days had been most indubitably on the wane. Entering the _sanctum_, I stood for a few seconds behind the wooden screen—which I have already mentioned, and which admits of a new-comer, himself unseen, reconnoitring the occupants of the place—to survey the visitor whose arrival seemed so acceptable to the presiding goddess. I had ample time to take a good look at him; for, whilst he discussed a glass of sherry and a bitter (a glass of sherry and a bitter—and it was not yet eleven o’clock!), both talker and listener were so engrossed with the former’s jokes and conversation that I had entered completely unobserved. He was a stout young man of some five-and-twenty summers, with a whiskerless face, and a ruddy complexion, not yet destroyed, though obviously impaired, by his habits of life. His cheek, still healthy in colour, was mottled here and there, as if the vessels near the surface were kept habitually too full, and he already began to show that slight puffiness under the eyes, as if he had put his neckcloth on too tight, which is the certain symptom of a digestion impaired by the too liberal use of stimulants. Not that _his_ neckcloth was too tight—far from it. Save a scarlet knot halfway down his throat, secured by a horse-shoe pin, there was nothing to be seen of the customary wisp of ribbon which has now replaced that obsolete article of apparel, so concealed was it by the fall of a turned-down shirt collar, extremely well starched and of a singularly varied and gaudy pattern, not unlike the papering of a room. His hat, which he had not thought it necessary to lay aside, was of the “pork-pie” order, immortalised by Leech—a head-dress extremely trying to a countenance already divested by Nature of any particular expression, and which, like many other graceful eccentricities, looks as ill upon a man as it is becoming to a woman. Coat and waistcoat, I need hardly observe, were of a checked pattern, to which, for richness of hue and diversity of colours, the rainbow of heaven is a mere pale and feeble transparency. Beneath the latter, knickerbockers of course! formed apparently from some woollen fabric, designed by the inventor for a horse-cloth, and combining great strength of wear-and-tear, with an unassuming and neutral tint. Scarlet hose, imparting fulness to the calf, and general _contour_ to the leg (in this instance much required, the limbs themselves being of too massive an order for elegance), sprang from the voluminous superfluities above, and a pair of exceedingly stout half-boots, much strapped and pieced, and, as it were, tattooed like the _mocassins_ of a Red Indian, completed this choice and becoming costume.