"Yes, it certainly isn't the nicest weather for travelling," he said, in reply to his host's eager inquiries; but you see I said I'd come if it was possible; and here I am. I was on a committee in Victoria Street at half-past five; took a hansom, and told the man to drive to Brunswick Square like wildfire; packed my portmanteau and put on my dress-coat while the man waited; drove to the Oriental Club, and left my portmanteau with the porter while I dined with the Governor-General of Seringapatam; rose from the table at a quarter before nine, borrowed a railway rug from one of the waiters, and caught the nine-o'clock train at Waterloo; found myself an hour after at a little station where there was one deaf porter, and no vehicle of any description whatever; held considerable difficulty in getting any thing at all out of the deaf porter; but finally extracted the pleasing intelligence that Nasedale was a good ten miles, and that, barring John Cole's own bay mare at the Pig and Whistle, there wasn't an animal of any kind to be had within a mile and a half. Of course, after hearing this, the best thing was to get John Cole's bay mare; and fine work I had with John Cole before he would let me have the beast, which he keeps for his own pleasure and convenience, and which has never been ridden or driven by man or boy except himself since he bought her at Barnet Fair, six years come next October. However, when he saw that I meant to have the animal whether he liked it or not, and when he heard where I was coming, he made a virtue of necessity, and brought her out--and here I am: and I think, my dear Mountjoy, of all the Lanes I ever had the pleasure of beholding, the lanes between this place and the station are the muddiest; and of all the rain that ever reduced the civilised universe to pulp and slop, the rain I came through to-night has been the heaviest." After this Mr. O'Boyneville took possession of the company, as it was his wont to take possession of any assemblage in which he happened to find himself. He went into society very rarely, and the laws of society had very little restraint for him. He could talk well, and he knew that he could talk well. The necessities of his professional career had obliged him to possess himself of a superficial knowledge of every subject, and some smattering of almost every science. A native audacity did the rest; and a frank _bonhomie_ of manner, a slap-dash mode of expression, which was too original to be vulgar, won the suffrages of people who would have tabooed a smaller man for lesser sins against conventionality than those which were permitted in Mr. O'Boyneville.