The old gentleman was on this day inclined to be talkative and confidential, and I set down some more remarks which he made concerning my friends. “Your Indian Colonel,” says he, “seems a worthy man.” The Major quite forgot having been in India himself, unless he was in company with some very great personage. “He don’t seem to know much of the world, and we are not very intimate. Fitzroy Square is a dev’lish long way off for a fellow to go for a dinner, and _entre nous_, the dinner is rather queer and the company still more so. It’s right for you who are a literary man to see all sorts of people; but I’m different, you know, so Newcome and I are not very thick together. They say he wanted to marry your friend to Lady Anne’s daughter, an exceedingly fine girl; one of the prettiest girls come out this season. I hear the young men say so. And that shows how monstrous ignorant of the world Colonel Newcome is. His son could no more get that girl than he could marry one of the royal princesses. Mark my words, they intend Miss Newcome for Lord Kew. Those banker fellows are wild after grand marriages. Kew will sow his wild oats, and they’ll marry her to him; or if not to him, to some man of high rank. His father Walham was a weak young man; but his grandmother, old Lady Kew, is a monstrous clever old woman, too severe with her children, one of whom ran away and married a poor devil without a shilling. Nothing could show a more deplorable ignorance of the world than poor Newcome supposing his son could make such a match as that with his cousin. Is it true that he is going to make his son an artist? I don’t know what the dooce the world is coming to. An artist! By gad, in my time a fellow would as soon have thought of making his son a hairdresser, or a pastrycook, by gad.” And the worthy Major gives his nephew two fingers, and trots off to the next club in St. James’s Street, of which he is a member.