I would sit and watch him with a kind of a slow fire of anger in my bowels.

"Ah, friend, friend," I would think to myself, "if you were but through with this affair of the memorial, would you not kick me in the streets ?" Here I did him, as events have proved, the most foul injustice; and I think he was at once far more sincere, and a far more artful performer than I supposed.
But I had some warrant for my incredulity in the behaviour of that court of young advocates that hung about him in the hope of patronage.

The sudden favour of a lad not previously heard of troubled them at first out of measure; but two days were not gone by before I found myself surrounded with flattery and attention.

I was the same young man, and neither better nor bonnier, that they had rejected a month before; and now there was no civility too fine for me! The same, do I say?
It was not so; and the byname by which I went behind my back confirmed it.
Seeing me so firm with the Advocate, and persuaded that I was to fly high and far, they had taken a word from the golfing green, and called me _the Tee'd Ball_.[14] I was told I was now "one of themselves"; I was to taste of their soft lining, who had already made my own experience of the roughness of the outer husk; and the one, to whom I had been presented in Hope Park, was so assured as even to remind me of that meeting.

I told him I had not the pleasure of remembering it.
"Why," says he, "it was Miss Grant herself presented me! My name is so-and-so." "It may very well be, sir," said I, "but I have kept no mind of it." At which he desisted; and in the midst of the disgust that commonly overflowed my spirits I had a glisk of pleasure.
But I have not patience to dwell upon that time at length.