“The shares of that concern ain’t at a premium. I have had immense fun with Sherrick about it. I like the Hebrew, sir. He maddens with rage when F. B. goes and asks him whether any more pews are let overhead. Honeyman begged and borrowed in order to buy out the last man. I remember when the speculation was famous, when all the boxes (I mean the pews) were taken for the season, and you couldn’t get a place, come ever so early. Then Honeyman was spoilt, and gave his sermons over and over again. People got sick of seeing the old humbug cry, the old crocodile! Then we tried the musical dodge. F. B. came forward, sir, there. That _was_ a coup: I did it, sir. Bellew wouldn’t have sung for any man but me—and for two-and-twenty months I kept him as sober as Father Mathew. Then Honeyman didn’t pay him: there was a row in the sacred building, and Bellew retired. Then Sherrick must meddle in it. And having heard a chap out Hampstead way who Sherrick thought would do, Honeyman was forced to engage him, regardless of expense. You recollect the fellow, sir? The Reverend Simeon Rawkins, the lowest of the Low Church, sir—a red-haired dumpy man, who gasped at his _h’s_ and spoke with a Lancashire twang—he’d no more do for Mayfair than Grimaldi for Macbeth. He and Honeyman used to fight like cat and dog in the vestry: and he drove away a third part of the congregation. He was an honest man and an able man too, though not a sound Churchman” (F. B. said this with a very edifying gravity): “I told Sherrick this the very day I heard him. And if he had spoken to me on the subject I might have saved him a pretty penny—a precious deal more than the paltry sum which he and I had a quarrel about at that time—a matter of business, sir—a pecuniary difference about a small three months’ thing which caused a temporary estrangement between us. As for Honeyman, he used to cry about it. Your uncle is great in the lachrymatory line, Clive Newcome. He used to go with tears in his eyes to Sherrick, and implore him not to have Rawkins, but he would. And I must say for poor Charles that the failure of Lady Whittlesea’s has not been altogether Charles’s fault; and that Sherrick has kicked down that property.