Dinner over, the big sofa is pulled round in front of the fire and a bridge-table claims its devotees. I asked my host to be allowed to inspect the pictures which pretty well cover the walls. The most important is an excellent portrait of Queen Victoria in the early part of her reign. It is the work of "Lieut.-Col. Cadogan," and was begun on the wall of a guardroom--at Windsor, I fancy. The surface of the wall was cut off, the picture finished, and it now hangs, a fine work of art but a tremendous weight, in the place of honour. There is an admirable oil-colour of the old Duke of Wellington, showing a kindly old face looking down, a pleasant difference from the alert aquiline profile which most of his portraits show. There are prints of other celebrated generals, mostly Guardsmen, and an amusing caricature of three kings dining on guard. It is a very unfurnished guardroom, with a bare floor, in which their Majesties are being entertained, but the enthusiasm with which the officers are drinking their health makes up for the surroundings. A key to the print hangs hard by, but the names attached to the various figures are said to have been written in joke. Many of the pictures are sporting prints and hunting caricatures; but the original of _Vanity Fair's_ sketch of Dan Godfrey is in one corner; and a strange old picture of a battle, painted on a tea-tray, hangs over the door. On either side of the looking-glass, above the mantelpiece, are the list of officers on duties and the orders for the guard, the latter with a glass over them, which is supposed to have been cracked in Marlborough's time. Some very admirably arranged caricatures, with explanatory notes, are bound into a series of red volumes and kept in a glazed set of shelves, and these, with a number of blue-bound volumes of _The Pall Mall Magazine_, form the greater portion of the library available for the officers on guard. As the hands of the clock near eleven, the butler, who has been handing round "pegs" in long tumblers, takes up his position by the door. Military discipline is inexorable, and we (the guests) know that we must be out of the precincts of the guard by eleven o'clock. We say good-night to our hosts, and as we go downstairs we hear the clank of swords being buckled on. Outside in the courtyard a sergeant and a drummer and a man with a lantern are waiting for the officer to go the rounds. XXXI THE OLD BULL AND BUSH There is no side of London life that has died out more completely, so far as the upper classes are concerned, than the visits to the old tea-gardens which used to be the resort of the well-to-do classes from the days of King Charles II. up to the beginning of the last century. Bagginnage Wells, to which Nell Gwynne first brought the bucks, is only a name now, but Coleman, in his comedy, _Bon-ton_, defined good tone as to "Drink tea on summer afternoons At Bagginnage Wells with china and gilt spoons."