That carriage
belongs to their Club, and their Club belongs to them. They follow the
equipage with interest; they eye it knowingly as they see it in the
Park. But halt! we are not come to the Club Snobs yet. O my brave Snobs,
what a flurry there will be among you when those papers appear!
Well, you may judge, from the above description, what sort of a man
Goldmore is. A dull and pompous Leadenhall Street Croesus, good-natured
withal, and affable--cruelly affable. 'Mr. Goldmore can never forget,'
his lady used to say, 'that it was Mrs. Gray's Grandfather who sent
him to India; and though that young woman has made the most imprudent
marriage in the world, and has left her station in society, her husband
seems an ingenious and laborious young man, and we shall do everything
in our power to be of use to him.' So they used to ask the Grays to
dinner twice or thrice in a season, when, by way of increasing the
kindness, Buff, the butler, is ordered to hire a fly to convey them to
and from Portland Place.
Of course I am much too good-natured a friend of both parties not to
tell Gray of Goldmore's opinion in him, and the nabob's astonishment
at the of the briefless barrister having any dinner at all. Indeed,
Goldmore's saying became a joke against Gray amongst us wags at the
Club, and we used to ask him when he tasted meat last? whether we should
bring him home something from dinner? and cut a thousand other mad
pranks with him in our facetious way.
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