Amy gave us merely a tray-supper in one corner of the drawing-room, with plenty of champagne and claret. Brummell, in his zeal for cold chicken, soon appeared to forget everybody in the room. A loud discordant laugh from the Honourable John Ward, who was addressing something to Luttrell at the other end of the table, led me to understand that he had just, in his own opinion, said a very good thing; yet I saw his corner of the room full of serious faces. "Do you keep a valet, sir?" said I. "I believe I have a rascal of that kind at home," said the learned, ugly scion of nobility, with disgusting affectation. "Then," I retorted, "do, in God's name, bring him next Saturday to stand behind your chair." "For what, I pray?" "Merely to laugh at your jokes," I rejoined. "It is such hard work for you, sir, who have both to cut the jokes and to laugh at them too!" "Do pray show him up, there's a dear creature, whenever you have an opportunity," whispered Brummell in my ear, with his mouth full of chicken. "Is he not an odious little monster of ill-nature, take him altogether?" I asked. "And look at that tie?" said Brummell, shrugging up his shoulders and fixing his eyes on Ward's neck-cloth. Ward was so frightened at this commencement of hostilities from me, that he immediately began to pay his court to me, and engaged me to take a drive with him the next morning in his curricle. "Go with him," whispered Brummell in my ear. "Keep on terms with him, on purpose to laugh at him." And then he turned round to Fanny, to ask her who her man of that morning was. "You allude to the gentleman I was riding with in the park?" answered Fanny. "I know who he is," said Alvanly. "Fanny is a very nice girl, and I wish she would not encourage such people. Upon my word it is quite shocking." "Whom did you ride with to-day, Fanny?" I inquired. "A d----n sugar baker," said Alvanly. "I rode out to-day," replied Fanny, reddening, "with a very respectable man of large fortune." "Oh yes!" said Alvanly, "there is a good deal of money to be got in the sugar line." "Why do not you article yourself then to a baker of it," I observed, "and so pay some of your debts?" This was followed by a laugh, which Alvanly joined in with great good humour. "What is his name?" inquired Luttrell. "Mr. John Mitchel," answered Fanny. "He received his education at a public school, with Lord Alvanly." "I do not recollect Mitchel," retorted Alvanly; "but I believe there were a good many grocers admitted at that time." Fanny liked Lord Alvanly of all things, and knew very little of Mr. Mitchel, except that he professed to be her very ardent admirer; yet her defence of the absent was ever made with all the warmth and energy her shyness would permit. "Now, gentlemen," said Fanny, "have the goodness to listen to the facts as they really are." Everybody was silent; for everybody delighted to hear Fanny talk.