CHAPTER VII.
THE TEA-TABLE.
-- --While the cups, Which cheer, but not inebriate, wait on each.
COWPER.
It was common at the Well, for the fair guests occasionally to give tea to the company,--such at least as from their rank and leading in the little society, might be esteemed fit to constitute themselves patronesses of an evening; and the same lady generally carried the authority she had acquired into the ball-room, where two fiddles and a bass, at a guinea a night, with a _quantum sufficit_ of tallow candles, (against the use of which Lady Penelope often mutinied,) enabled the company--to use the appropriate phrase--"to close the evening on the light fantastic toe." On the present occasion, the lion of the hour, Mr.Francis Tyrrel, had so little answered the high-wrought expectations of Lady Penelope, that she rather regretted having ever given herself any trouble about him, and particularly that of having manoeuvred herself into the patronage of the tea-table for the evening, to the great expenditure of souchong and congo.

Accordingly, her ladyship had no sooner summoned her own woman, and her _fille de chambre_, to make tea, with her page, footman, and postilion, to hand it about, (in which duty they were assisted by two richly-laced and thickly-powdered footmen of Lady Binks's, whose liveries put to shame the more modest garb of Lady Penelope's, and even dimmed the glory of the suppressed coronet upon the buttons,) than she began to vilipend and depreciate what had been so long the object of her curiosity.
"This Mr.Tyrrel," she said, in a tone of authoritative decision, "seems after all a very ordinary sort of person, quite a commonplace man, who, she dared say, had considered his condition, in going to the old alehouse, much better than they had done for him, when they asked him to the Public Rooms.

He had known his own place better than they did--there was nothing uncommon in his appearance or conversation--nothing at all _frappant_--she scarce believed he could even draw that sketch.

Mr.
Winterblossom, indeed, made a great deal of it; but then all the world knew that every scrap of engraving or drawing, which Mr.Winterblossom contrived to make his own, was, the instant it came into his collection, the finest thing that ever was seen--that was the way with collectors--their geese were all swans." "And your ladyship's swan has proved but a goose, my dearest Lady Pen," said Lady Binks.
"_My_ swan, dearest Lady Binks! I really do not know how I have deserved the appropriation." "Do not be angry, my dear Lady Penelope; I only mean, that for a fortnight and more you have spoke constantly _of_ this Mr.Tyrrel, and all dinner-time you spoke _to_ him." The fair company began to collect around, at hearing the word _dear_ so often repeated in the same brief dialogue, which induced them to expect sport, and, like the vulgar on a similar occasion, to form a ring for the expected combatants.
"He sat betwixt us, Lady Binks," answered Lady Penelope, with dignity.
"You had your usual headache, you know, and, for the credit of the company, I spoke for one." "For _two_, if your ladyship pleases," replied Lady Binks.

"I mean," she added, softening the expression, "for yourself and me." "I am sorry," said Lady Penelope, "I should have spoken for one who can speak so smartly for herself, as my dear Lady Binks--I did not, by any means, desire to engross the conversation--I repeat it, there is a mistake about this man." "I think there is," said Lady Binks, in a tone which implied something more than mere assent to Lady Penelope's proposition.
"I doubt if he is an artist at all," said the Lady Penelope; "or if he is, he must be doing things for some Magazine, or Encyclopedia, or some such matter." "_I_ doubt, too, if he be a professional artist," said Lady Binks.