“Does he intend to have our relation up to town, sir? I should like to meet Mrs. Mason of all things. A venerable washerwoman, I daresay, or perhaps keeps a public-house,” simpered out young Barnes. “Silence, Barnes; you jest at everything, you young men do—you do. Colonel Newcome’s affection for his old nurse does him the greatest honour,” said the Baronet, who really meant what he said. “And I hope my mother will have her to stay a good deal at Newcome. I’m sure she must have been a washerwoman, and mangled my uncle in early life. His costume struck me with respectful astonishment. He disdains the use of straps to his trousers, and is seemingly unacquainted with gloves. If he had died in India, would my late aunt have had to perish on a funeral pile?” Here Mr. Quilter, entering with a heap of bills, put an end to these sarcastic remarks, and young Newcome, applying himself to his business (of which he was a perfect master), forgot about his uncle till after City hours, when he entertained some young gentlemen of Bays’s Club with an account of his newly arrived relative. Towards the City, whither he wended his way whatever had been the ball or the dissipation of the night before, young Barnes Newcome might be seen walking every morning, resolutely and swiftly, with his neat umbrella. As he passed Charing Cross on his way westwards, his little boots trailed slowly over the pavement, his head hung languid (bending lower still, and smiling with faded sweetness as he doffed his hat and saluted a passing carriage), his umbrella trailed after him. Not a dandy on all the Pall Mall pavement seemed to have less to do than he. Heavyside, a large young officer of the household troops—old Sir Thomas de Boots—and Horace Fogey, whom every one knows—are in the window of Bays’s, yawning as widely as that window itself. Horses under the charge of men in red jackets are pacing up and down St. James’s Street. Cabmen on the stand are regaling with beer. Gentlemen with grooms behind them pass towards the Park. Great dowager barouches roll along emblazoned with coronets, and driven by coachmen in silvery wigs. Wistful provincials gaze in at the clubs. Foreigners chatter and show their teeth, and look at the ladies in the carriages, and smoke and spit refreshingly round about. Policeman X slouches along the pavement. It is five o’clock, the noon in Pall Mall. “Here’s little Newcome coming,” says Mr. Horace Fogey. “He and the muffin-man generally make their appearance in public together.” “Dashed little prig,” says Sir Thomas de Boots, “why the dash did they ever let him in here? If I hadn’t been in India, by dash—he should have been blackballed twenty times over, by dash.” Only Sir Thomas used words far more terrific than dash, for this distinguished cavalry officer swore very freely. “He amuses me; he’s such a mischievous little devil,” says good-natured Charley Heavyside. “It takes very little to amuse you,” remarks Fogey.