"Come, boy, let us to the little chocolate-house at the corner of Golden Square, which is nearly as modish as White's, and much more select. The proprietor boasts of dukes who have been ruined on his premises, and of women of rank who have pawned more than their diamonds and parted with more than I O U's after a night at basset." "I will go with you, but not to play," answered Herrick, as they put on their hats. "You were always as obstinate as Old Nick. Yet you should be fond of the dice-box, for you have ever had the devil's luck at cards, and ought to live by play." "Yes, I have had that kind of diabolical good fortune which seems like an omen that I shall be lucky in nothing else. But I am not going to live by hazard, even to oblige you. I would rather starve." "You are right, Herrick. It is the basest mode of subsistence, or almost the basest. There are one or two worse ways of living in this modern Babylon of ours; but for a gentlemanly profession, I grant you gambling is about the worst. We need neither of us play, but we may as well stroll to Golden Square and take a dish of chocolate, and hear what is going on at the Court end of town, now that everybody is in the country, and the last good story about the Prince and his wife's waiting-woman." "Strange how these sober Hanoverians, these passionless money-grubbers, affect the libertine airs of a Philip of Orleans or a Duc de Richelieu," said Herrick. "O, but we cannot do without a profligate king," exclaimed Lavendale. "See how much gayer and pleasanter town has been since sober-minded, pious, domestic Anne gave place to these gay Hanoverian dogs, who imitate old Rowley in little, yet with a certain bourgeois respectability in their arrangements to which he never condescended. See how the theatres have multiplied, and how Italian opera and French plays have thriven, in spite of the prejudiced mob; and our masquerades, balls, ridottos, call them what you will, do we not owe them also to King George, who has encouraged enterprising Heidegger? No such benefaction for a nation as a prince who loves pleasure. Trade thrives and the land fattens under the rule of a _roué_. Remember how England prospered under Charles II." They were in the street by this time, or rather that mixture of town and country which lay between Bloomsbury and Golden Square. The rain had ceased, the sky had cleared, and the moon was high, a night such as footpads and highwaymen love not. In this clear summer weather there were fewer murders and robberies than in the long dark nights of autumn and winter, and even that favourite haunt of London banditti, Denmark Street, St. Giles's, might be passed with safety.