 Court, and furnish and occupy his friend's vacant room
there. For it must be said of Pen, that no man was more easily led than he to do
a thing, when it was a novelty, or when he had a mind to it. And Pidgeon, the
youth, and Flanagan, the laundress, divided their allegiance now between
Warrington and Pen.
 

                                  Chapter XXXI

                           Old and New Acquaintances.

Elated with the idea of seeing life, Pen went into a hundred queer London
haunts. He liked to think he was consorting with all sorts of men - so he beheld
coal-heavers in their tap-rooms, boxers in their inn-parlours, honest citizens
disporting in the suburbs or on the river; and he would have liked to hob and
nob with celebrated pickpockets, or drink a pot of ale with a company of
burglars and cracksmen, had chance afforded him an opportunity of making the
acquaintance of this class of society. It was good to see the gravity with which
Warrington listened to the Tutbury Pet or the Brighton Stunner at the Champion's
Arms, and behold the interest which he took in the coal-heaving company
assembled at the Fox-under-the-Hill. His acquaintance with the public-houses of
the metropolis and its neighbourhood, and with the frequenters of their various
parlours, was prodigious. He was the personal friend of the landlord and the
landlady, and welcome to the bar as to the club-room. He liked their society, he
said, better than that of his own class, whose manners annoyed him, and whose
conversation bored him. »In society,« he used to say, »everybody is the same -
wears the same dress, eats and drinks, and says the same things; one young dandy
at the club talks and looks just like another, one Miss at a ball exactly
resembles another; whereas there's character here. I like to talk with the
strongest man in England, or the man who can drink the most beer in England, or
with that tremendous republican of a hatter, who thinks Thistlewood was the
greatest character in history. I like gin-and-water better than claret. I like a
sanded floor in Carnaby Market better than a chalked one in Mayfair. I prefer
Snobs; I own it.« Indeed, this gentleman was a social republican; and it never
entered his head while conversing with Jack and Tom that he was in any respect
their better; although, perhaps, the deference which they paid him might
secretly please him.
    Pen followed him then to these various resorts
