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In the race of fashion the resolute and active De Mogyns has passed the poor old Clapperclaw. Her progress in gentility may be traced by the sets of friends whom she has courted, and made, and cut, and left behind her. She has struggled so gallantly for polite reputation that she has won it: pitilessly kicking down the ladder as she advanced degree by degree.
His pleasure is to make his guests tipsy, and to tell everybody how and when the period of inebriation arose. And Miss Clapperclaw tells me that he often comes over laughing and giggling to her, and pretending that he has brought ME into this condition a calumny which I fling contemptuously in his face. He scarcely gives any but men's parties, and invites the whole club home to dinner.
The intrigues set afoot by the De Mogyns to get the Duchess of Buckskin to her parties, would strike a Talleyrand with admiration. I have the following story from my noble friend Lady Clapperclaw herself, Lady Kathleen O'Shaughnessy that was, and daughter of the Earl of Turfanthunder:
For all these same birds did so peck, clapperclaw, and maul one another all that time, that there was the devil and all to do, and the island was in a fair way of being left without inhabitants. Some stood up for this pope-hawk, some for t'other.
The very first day on which an intimate and valued female friend of mine saw Mrs. S. M.'s toilette, her manners, little dog, carnation-colored parasol, &c., Miss Elizabeth Clapperclaw clapped to the opera-glass with which she had been regarding the new inhabitant of Our Street, came away from the window in a great flurry, and began poking her fire in a fit of virtuous indignation.
Bolster is going, I know; she will be Blanche's chaperon." "You wouldn't subscribe for the Rathdrum blanket and potato fund; you, who come out of the parish," says I, "and whose grandfather, honest man, kept cows there." "Will twenty guineas be enough, dearest Lady Clapperclaw?"
I see thou hast played me a scurvy trick, thou villainous fellow, cried the angry devil; at last I am fully resolved even to make an end of the business betwixt thee and myself about the ground, and these shall be the terms: we will clapperclaw each other, and whoever of us two shall first cry Hold, shall quit his share of the field, which shall wholly belong to the conqueror.
'I thought my answer was a settler to her: but the next day she comes weeping to my arms "Dear Lady Clapperclaw," says she, "it's not for ME; I ask it for my blessed Blanche! a young creature in her first season, and not at your ball! My tender child will pine and die of vexation. I don't want to come. I will stay at home to nurse Sir Alured in the gout. Mrs.
I know how many lumps of sugar you take from each pound as it arrives. I have counted the lumps, you old thief, and for years have never said a word, except to Miss Clapperclaw, the first-floor lodger. Once I put a bottle of pale brandy into that cupboard, of which you and I only have keys, and the liquor wasted and wasted away until it was all gone.
Miss Clapperclaw says we are both a couple of old fools; and that she knew when I set off last year to Rodwell Regis, after meeting the two young ladies at a party at General Champion's house in our street, that I was going on a goose's errand. I shall dine there on Christmas-day; and so I wish a merry Christmas to all young and old boys.
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