Without being a stickler for the more ceremonious forms of politeness, or an advocate for the stilted dignity of the old school, I do not quite relish the tendency of certain individuals to be so “gallows familiar,” as a poor good-for-nothing friend of mine used to call it; nor do I see that a man has a right to call me “Softly,” with no handle prefixed, the third time he has ever met me in his life, “Gaudent prænomine molles auriculæ,” quoth Horace; and he understood human nature, if anybody did. Besides, I knew enough of the gentleman now occupying the bar, to have no great wish to cultivate his further intimacy. I had avoided him hitherto as much as possible. It seemed to be part of the bad luck of the day that I should be thrown into his society now. To have failed by thirty seconds in seeing Miss Merlin in the morning, and find myself the boon companion of young Plumtree at noon, was surely a combination of untoward circumstances which that individual himself would have called “hard lines.” As I smoked my cigar, rather sulkily, and watched my aversion making the agreeable to Miss Lushington—a process at which, to do him justice, he appeared singularly skilful,—I recalled in my mind all I knew of his antecedents, and could not help congratulating myself, the while, that he was no son of mine. Young James Plumtree, then—or “Jovial Jem,” as he was called by his familiars—was the only son of John Plumtree, of The Ashes, a most respectable, and, I believe, unimpeachable country gentleman, living in the vicinity of Soakington. I have always understood that the father was a man of grave and particularly gentlemanlike demeanour, and, although an excellent sportsman, extremely averse to anything approaching slang. It was, therefore, perfectly natural that his son should turn out one of the “loudest” and most uproarious rattles of his day.