"There is a solemn fellow, to whom the
women have taken a fancy, who lives but a few doors off in Gower Street;
and who, for his last sixteen visits, has taken sixteen pounds sixteen
shillings out of my pocket, and as if guineas grew there, with the most
admirable gravity. He talks the fashions to my mother-in-law. My poor
wife hangs on every word he says. Look! There is his carriage coming up
now! and there is his fee, confound him!" says Clive, casting a rueful
look towards a little packet lying upon the mantelpiece, by the side of
that skinned figure in plaster of Paris which we have seen in most
studios.
I looked out of window and saw a certain Fashionable Doctor tripping out
of his chariot; that Ladies' Delight, who has subsequently migrated from
Bloomsbury to Belgravia; and who has his polite foot now in a thousand
nurseries and boudoirs. What Confessors were in old times, Quackenboss
and his like are in our Protestant country. What secrets they know! into
what mystic chambers do they not enter! I suppose the Campaigner made a
special toilette to receive her fashionable friend, for that lady attired
in considerable splendour, and with the precious jewel on her head, which
I remembered at Boulogne, came into the studio two minutes after the
Doctor's visit was announced, and made him a low curtsey.
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