Lord Mucklebury was a gay man in every sense of the word. He loved a jest almost as well as a dinner, and would rather have been quoted as the sayer of a good thing than as the doer of a great one. He had enjoyed life with fewer drawbacks from misfortune than most men; and having reached the age of forty, had made up his mind, as soberly as he could do on any subject, that the only privilege of the aristocracy worth valuing was the leisure they enjoyed, or might enjoy if they chose it, for amusing themselves. Nature intended him for a good-tempered man, but fun had spoiled him; having laughed with everybody for the first twenty years of his life, he learned during the second that it was a better joke still to laugh at them; and accordingly the principal material for the wit on which his reputation rested was derived, at the time Mrs. Barnaby made his acquaintance, from an aptitude to perceive the absurdities of his fellow creatures, and a most unshrinking audacity in exposing them. Having pointed out Mrs. Barnaby to a set of his clever friends as the joke in which he meant to indulge during the three or four weeks of Cheltenham discipline to which he annually submitted, it became necessary to his honour that he should prove her to be ridiculous enough to merit the distinction; and he knew well enough that all she required to make her perfect in this line was as much nonsense from himself as would keep her vanity afloat. The occupation suited him exactly; it threatened little fatigue, and promised much amusement; so that by the time Mrs. Barnaby had made up her mind to win and wear his lordship's coronet, he had decided with equal sincerity of purpose to render her the jest of the season to his Cheltenham acquaintance. An hour's close examination of Miss Morrison concerning the _manière d'être_ of the _beau monde_ during the season, sufficed to convince the widow that, expensive as the boarding-house had appeared to her, it was far from being all that was necessary for her present purpose. She must have a carriage, she must have a tall footman, she must have a smart lady's-maid; and great was the credit due to the zeal and activity of this invaluable friend for the promptitude and dispatch with which these indispensable articles were supplied. Some idea of this may be gathered from the fact, that the carriage which conveyed them to the house of Lady Elizabeth Norris, was one hired, horses, coachman, and all, for the season; while the first applicant of six feet high who appeared, in consequence of the earnest requisition for such an individual made at half a dozen different shops, followed the widow in a full suit of livery the following Sunday to church.