The mail passed the Peacock, at Islington, about half-past eight o'clock; and long before they had reached even that point, the eager and anxious eye of Titmouse had been on the look-out for indications of his celebrity. He was, however, compelled to own that both people and places seemed much as usual--wearing no particular air of excitement. At this he was a little chagrined, till he reflected on the vulgar ignorance of the movements of the great, for which the eastern regions of the metropolis were proverbial, and also on the increasing duskiness of the evening, the rapid pace at which the mail rattled along, and the circumstance of his being concealed inside. When his humble hackney-coach (its driver a feeble old man, with a wisp of straw for a hat-band, and sitting on the rickety box like a heap of dirty old clothes, and the flagging and limping horses looking truly miserable objects) had rumbled slowly up to the lofty and gloomy door of the Harcourt Hotel, it seemed to excite no notice whatever. A tall waiter, in a plain suit of black evening dress, with his hands stuck behind his coat-tails, continued standing in the ample doorway, eying the plebeian vehicle which had drawn up, with utter indifference--conjecturing, probably, that it had come to the wrong door. With the same air of provoking superciliousness he stood till the valet, having jumped down from his seat beside the driver, ran up, and in a peremptory sort of way exclaimed, "MR. TITMOUSE of Yatton!" This stirred the waiter into something like energy. "Here, sir!" called out Mr. Titmouse from within the coach; and on the waiter's slowly approaching, the former inquired of him in a sufficiently swaggering manner--"Pray, has the _Earl of Dreddlington_ been inquiring for me here to-day?" The words seemed to operate like magic; converting the person addressed, in a moment, into a slave--supple and obsequious. "His Lordship has not been here to-day, sir," he replied in a low tone, with a most courteous inclination, gently opening the door, and noiselessly letting down the steps. "Do you alight, sir?" "Why--a--have you room for me, and my _fellow_ there?" "Oh yes, sir! certainly.--Shall I show you into the coffee-room, sir?"