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you beat it, the better it likes you—if you have money. Only don't kick too hard; for, after all, it has a hundred million pair of shins to your one.'

'Don't fear that I shall run a-muck against society just now. I am too throughly out of my own good books. I have been for years laughing at Young England, and yet its little finger is thicker than my whole body, for it is trying to do something; and I, alas, am doing utterly nothing. I should be really glad to take a lesson of these men and their plans for social improvement.'

'You will have a fine opportunity this evening. Don't you dine at Minchampstead?'

'Yes. Do you?'

'Mr. Jingle dines everywhere, except at home. Will you take me over in your trap?'

'Done. But whom shall we meet there?'

'The Lavingtons, and Vieuxbois, and Vaurien, and a parson or two, I suppose. But between Saint Venus and Vieuxbois you may soon learn enough to make you a sadder man, if not a wiser one.'

'Why not a wiser one? Sadder than now I cannot be; or less wise, God knows.'

The colonel looked at Lancelot with one of those kindly, thoughtful smiles, which came over him whenever his better child's heart could bubble up through the thick crust of worldliness.

'My young friend, you have been a little too much on the stilts heretofore. Take care that, now you are off them, you don't lie down and sleep, instead