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26 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY
a lord, and I never spoke to more than three in the whole course
of my life." To our betters we can reconcile ourselves, if you
please, respecting them very sincerely, laughing at their jokes,
making allowance for their stupidities, meekly suffering their
insolence; but we can't pardon our equals going beyond us. A
friend of mine who lived amicably and happily among his friends,
and relatives at Hackney, was on a sudden disowned by the
latter, cut by the former, and doomed in innumerable prophecies
to ruin, because he kept a footboy,—a harmless little blowsy-faced
urchin, in light snuff-coloured clothes, glistering over with sugar-loaf
buttons. There is another man, a great man, a literary man, whom
the public loves, and who took a sudden leap from obscurity into
fame and wealth. This was a crime ; but he bore his rise with so
much modesty, that even his brethren of the pen did not envy
him. One luckless day he set up a one-horse chaise ; from that
minute he was doomed.
" Have you seen his new carriage ?" says Snarley.
" Yes," says Yow ; " he's so consumedly proud of it, that he
can't see his old friends while he drives."
" I th it a donkey-cart," lisps Simper, "thith gwand cawwaige?
I always thaid that the man, from hith thtile, wath fitted to be
a vewy dethent cothtermonger."
" Yes, yes," cries old Candour, " a sad pity indeed !—dreadfully
extravagant, I'm told—bad health—expensive family—works going
down every day—and now he must set up a carriage forsooth !"
Snarley, Yow, Simper, Candour, hate their brother. If he is
ruined, they will be kind to him, and just; but he is successful,
and woe be to him.
This trifling digression of half a page or so, although it seems to
have nothing to do with the story in hand, has, nevertheless, the
strongest relation to it ; and you shall hear what.
In one word, then, Mr. Brandon bragged so much, and assumed
such airs of superiority, that after a while he perfectly disgusted
Mrs. Gann and the Misses Macarty, who were gentlefolks themselves,
and did not at all like his way of telling them that he was
their better. Mr. Fitch was swallowed up in his hart as he called
it, and cared nothing for Brandon's airs. Gann, being a low-spirited
fellow, completely submitted to Mr. Brandon, and looked up to him
with deepest wonder. And poor little Caroline followed her father's
faith, and in six weeks after Mr. Brandon's arrival at the lodgings
had grown to believe him the most perfect, finished, polished, agreeable
of mankind. Indeed, the poor girl had never seen a gentleman
before, and towards such her gentle heart turned instinctively.