"To tell you the truth, I could pull the Tompkinses through another season, but I am keeping all my best ideas for the Bodwinkles. Bodwinkles' first ball is to cost £2000. He wanted me to do it for £1500, and I should have been able to do it for that if Mrs Bodwinkle had had any _h_'s; but the _crême, de la crême_ require an absence of aspirations to be made up to them somehow. Oh, with the extra £500 I can do it easily," said Spiffy, with an air of self-complacency. "She is a comparatively young woman, you see, without daughters; that simplifies matters very much. And then Bodwinkle can be so much more useful to political men than Gorgon Tompkins; the only fear is that he may commit himself at a late hour at the supper-table, but I have hit on a notion which will overcome all these possible _contretemps_." "What is that?" said I, curiously. "In confidence, I don't mind telling you, as you are not in the line yourself; but it is a master-stroke of genius. Like all great ideas, its merit lies in its simplicity." "Don't keep us any longer in suspense; I promise not to appropriate it." "Well," said Spiffy, triumphantly, "I am going to _pay_ the aristocracy to come!" "Pay them!" said I, really astounded; "how on earth are you going to get them to take the money?" "Ah, that is the secret. Wait till the Bodwinkles' ball. You will see how delicately I shall contrive it; a great deal more neatly than you do when you leave your doctor's fee mysteriously wrapped in paper upon his mantelpiece. I shall no more hurt that high sense of honour, and that utter absence of anything like snobbism which characterises the best London Society, than a French cook would offend the nostrils of his guests with an overpowering odour of garlic; but it is a really grand idea." "Worthy of Julius Cæsar, Charlemagne, or the first Napoleon," said I; "posterity will recognise you as a social giant with a mission, if the small men and the envious of the present day refuse to do so." "I don't mind telling you," Spiffy went on, "that the idea first occurred to me in a Scotch donkey-circus, where I won, as a prize for entering the show, a red plush waistcoat worth five shillings. The fact is, Bodwinkle is so anxious to get people, he would go to any expense; he has even offered me a commission on all the accepted invitations I send out for him, graduated on a scale proportioned to the rank of the acceptor. I am afraid it would not be considered quite the right thing to take it; what do you think?" "I doubt whether society would stand that. You must bring them to it gradually. At present, I feel sure they would draw the line at a 'commission.' Apropos of the Bodwinkles, I want to have a little private conversation with you."