"If that young man goes on as charmingly as he has begun," Clive's
cousin, Barnes Newcome, said of his kinsman, "he will be a paragon. I saw
him last night at Vauxhall in company with young Moss, whose father does
bills and keeps the bric-a-brac shop in Wardour Street. Two or three
other gentlemen, probably young old-clothes-men, who had concluded for
the day the labours of the bag, joined Mr. Newcome and his friend, and
they partook of rack-punch in an arbour. He is a delightful youth, cousin
Clive, and I feel sure he is about to be an honour to our family."
CHAPTER XIX
The Colonel at Home
Our good Colonel's house had received a coat of paint, which, like Madame
Latour's rouge in her latter days, only served to make her careworn face
look more ghastly. The kitchens were gloomy. The stables were gloomy.
Great black passages; cracked conservatory; dilapidated bathroom, with
melancholy waters moaning and fizzing from the cistern; the great large
blank stone staircase--were all so many melancholy features in the
general countenance of the house; but the Colonel thought it perfectly,
cheerful and pleasant, and furnished it in his rough-and-ready way.
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