'Lord and Lady
Frederick Howlet were asked, but they have friends at Ivybush,' Mrs.
Ponto told me; and that very morning, the Castlehaggards sent an excuse,
as her ladyship had a return of the quinsy. Between ourselves, Lady
Castlehaggard's quinsy always comes on when there is dinner at the
Evergreens.
If the keeping of polite company could make a woman happy, surely my
kind hostess Mrs. Ponto was on that day a happy woman. Every person
present (except the unlucky impostor who pretended to a connexion with
the Snobbington Family, and General Sago, who had brought home I don't
know how many lacs of rupees from India,) was related to the Peerage
or the Baronetage. Mrs. P. had her heart's desire. If she had been an
Earl's daughter herself could she have expected better company?--and her
family were in the oil-trade at Bristol, as all her friends very well
know.
What I complained of in my heart was not the dining--which, for this
once, was plentiful and comfortable enough--but the prodigious dulness
of the talking part of the entertainment. O my beloved brother Snobs of
the City, if we love each other no better than our country brethren, at
least we amuse each other more; if we bore ourselves, we are not called
upon to go ten miles to do it!
For instance, the Hipsleys came ten miles from the south, and the
Hawbucks ten miles from the north, of the Evergreens; and were magnates
in two different divisions of the county of Mangelwurzelshire.
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