Once, on hearing it observed of one of their friends that he was awkward at counting money, “Why, Sir,” he said, “I am likewise awkward at counting money; but then, Sir, the reason is plain: I have had very little money to count.” Though he used to censure carelessness very strongly, he once owned to Boswell that, just to avoid the trouble of locking up five guineas, he had hid them so well that he had never found them since. Talking of Gray’s Odes, which he did not care for, he said, “They are forced plants, raised in a hot-bed; they are but cucumbers, after all.” A gentleman present, unluckily for himself said, “Had they been literally cucumbers, they had been better things than odes.” “Yes, Sir,” said Johnson, “for a hog.” Once Johnson was in company with several clergymen, who, starting a war of wits, carried the conversation to an excess of conviviality. Johnson, whom they thought to entertain, sat moodily silent. Then bending to a friend, he said, by no means in a whisper: “This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.” Talking of a point of delicate scrupulosity of moral conduct, he said: “Men of harder minds than ours will do many things from which you and I would shrink. Yet, Sir, they will perhaps do more good in life than we. But let us help one another.” Clare’s eyes were now attracted to the animated group of players, at the far end of the room. Barry, the actor, was standing in a fine attitude, dressed in his brown velvet suit. The calves of his legs were resplendent in silk stockings, and he was repeating lines from the part of Romeo to his listening friends. Now and again a little ripple of applause rose and spread among the group, but the gentlemen did not seem so enthusiastic as the ladies. Old Quin was distinctly adverse, and sat, with quite three dissenting chins, rolling his eyes in a ferocious manner. There sat Fielding, the writer. Clare had often heard her Mother read his name aloud from the frame, and say how much she liked the shape of his nose. So she looked at this feature particularly. It was certainly a very long nose, and aquiline; what physiognomy books speak of as the “cogitative nose.” “Some day I shall read ‘Tom Jones,’” said Clare to herself, “and I expect I shall like it as much as Mother does. But I shall read it in comfortable print, not in the edition that makes one say fowls for souls all through. O, there’s Miss Ridge. _I_ see her.” She threaded her way in and out of the company till she came to that bird-like person, Miss Ridge. She had the pale ribbon in her fawn-coloured hair, and the little shadows round her nose and the corners of her mouth, were just as exquisite in real life, as in the picture. “Ring-a-ring a-roses A pocket full of posies,”