said Mr. Ripple who was approaching the archway from the other side. "Good G——, sir, are you mad?" To Mr. Ripple the shock was great. He had aspirations for Mr. Lovely. To be sure, he was wild, an extravagant young dog, but then he possessed an inimitable assurance of manner, a pretty talent for polite verse-making, and a consummate taste in brocades. The Beau of late had often pondered the choice of his successor. He had aspirations for Mr. Lovely and now he saw his favourite positively panting (the most ungenteel motion and fatal to the fall of a waistcoat), not merely panting but smeared with mould, hugging potsherds, and apparently quite unmoved by his degradation. Is it wonderful that Mr. Ripple cried,

"Good G——, sir, are you mad?"

"Yes," shouted Mr. Lovely.

"Or drunk?"

"Yes," shouted Mr. Lovely.

As he seemed inclined to answer every question in the affirmative, the Beau remarked he wished to see a representative group of the young gentlemen at the Blue Boar upon a matter of the gravest social and civick importance.

Our hero ejaculated, "With you in the twinkling of a bedpost," and raced across the yard, up the first staircase, along the first gallery and into the last room.

A light broke upon Mr. Ripple's bewilderment.

"He has discovered some prehistorick relicks. Probably Cinerary Urn, a Lunette or possibly a gold coin of Rome."

In pleasant anticipation, the Beau who was an intimate friend of Mr. Sylvanus Urban, beheld the folded copper-plate illustrating the discovery and the rounded sentences on the opposite page of the Gentleman's Magazine in which the excavations would be carefully recorded by Horace Ripple.

"This must assuage my wrath," he decided by the door of the coffee-room.

To tell the truth, the Beau was on censure bent when he met our hero outside the Blue Boar.

Already, that morning, he had alluded to the riotous nocturnal behaviour, the assaults upon the watch, the fusilade of empty bottles, but not being able to descry a single offender, he determined that personal and individual remonstrance would be more efficacious. To the Blue Boar therefore, he went having first exchanged his suit of olive green for one of black sattin unrelieved by silver and terminated by ruffles whose cambrick fell in severe folds and condemnatory lines.

As he stepped from the Great House round the Crescent and along the High Street, he passed in sombre eclipse upon the gaiety of subjects shining with the reflection of his genteel rays.

Presently Mr. Lovely came back still bearing the marks of the potted soil.

"Was it an Urn?"

Mr. Lovely looked surprized.

"A Lachrymatory perhaps? Or a Lunette? Or," Mr. Ripple grew breathless with excitement, "not an Image of Æsculapius?"

"Pray, sir, are you trying to humour a madman? Because on my soul, I don't know what you are driving at."

"So, sir, your late phrenzy was nothing more than the unbridled haste and inconsiderate volition of youthful folly?" sternly demanded the Beau.

"I 'faith, I knocked over one of old Daish's precious pots, and was making haste to remove it from the region of his laments. That's all, and there's my hand on't."

"You will pardon me," replied the Beau drawing back, "I have no objection to shaking a hand stained by honest toil, but I have never shaken a hand sullied by mere zest for uncleanliness."

"As you will, dear Beau," laughed Mr. Lovely.

The Beau was about to point an example to adorn his statement when he was interrupted by the entrance of severe Mrs. Grindle clasping her nose with one hand, and with the other holding at arm's length the offending jacynth by a shred of its roots.

"Mr. Lovely, sir," she began and as our hero pulled forward a chair and the Beau leaned back to listen, she continued, "I have known a cat kitten in one of the maids' beds."

"How very distressing," murmured the Beau letting the firelight play in the diamonds of his rings.

"But never, never," proclaimed Mrs. Grindle swelling like Mr. Handel's Largo, "have I known a young gentleman want to turn his bachelor bed into a ploughed field. Mr. Lovely, sir, I'll trouble you to say if this is your planting or did you wish to insinuate that your bed was not made this morning?"

"Mrs. Grindle, madam," replied the accused, "you have heard of beds and you have heard of garden-beds. Mine is a garden-bed. A Parterre impromptu, a Landskip in miniature, a Bucolick of slumber, a dimity Eclogue. In a word—but pray, Mrs. Grindle, my dear Mrs. Grindle, out of regard for me rehabilitate that jacynth without a word to Mr. Daish, and I, out of regard for you, will certainly pay for the washing of the bedspread."

Mr. Lovely smiled so very engagingly and looked so completely innocent of any desire to insinuate anything except Mrs. Grindle's good-nature that the housekeeper gave way, condescended to smile and, as she retired, threw a quick glance in the direction of a mirrour to notice the angle of her snowy cap.

Having reduced Mrs. Grindle to affableness, Mr. Lovely turned his smile towards the Beau. The latter had watched with much satisfaction the progress of his favourite's negociations, thinking to himself that a man who could circumvent such a dragon as the housekeeper would be very well able to keep in order the most self-assertive of Duchesses. He began to relent his indignation and, as Lovely smiled at him, to see in his late impetuousness no more than the natural activity of a jolly young man. Moreover, for a certain reason, he had a genuine affection for the rogue, and was glad to perceive his high spirits.

"I came here this morning in the hope of a serious conversation with some of your friends. Are they—are they in the—er—taproom?"

"They're all gone after maids."

"Tut, tut, I wish I could make it plain that Curtain Wells exists for the continence, not the encouragement of appetites."