 all the heights of life one after
another, until now he looked, from the top of the fortifications, with the eye
of a philosopher and a patron, on the people down in the trenches.
    My reflections on this theme were still in progress when dinner was
announced. Mr. Waterbrook went down with Hamlet's aunt. Mr. Henry Spiker took
Mrs. Waterbrook. Agnes, whom I should have liked to take myself, was given to a
simpering fellow with weak legs. Uriah, Traddles, and I, as the junior part of
the company, went down last, how we could. I was not so vexed at losing Agnes as
I might have been, since it gave me an opportunity of making myself known to
Traddles on the stairs, who greeted me with great fervour: while Uriah writhed
with such obtrusive satisfaction and self-abasement, that I could gladly have
pitched him over the banisters.
    Traddles and I were separated at table, being billeted in two remote
corners: he in the glare of a red velvet lady: I, in the gloom of Hamlet's aunt.
The dinner was very long, and the conversation was about the Aristocracy - and
Blood. Mrs. Waterbrook repeatedly told us, that if she had a weakness, it was
Blood.
    It occurred to me several times that we should have got on better, if we had
not been quite so genteel. We were so exceedingly genteel, that our scope was
very limited. A Mr. and Mrs. Gulpidge were of the party, who had something to do
at second-hand (at least, Mr. Gulpidge had) with the law business of the Bank;
and what with the Bank, and what with the Treasury, we were as exclusive as the
Court Circular. To mend the matter, Hamlet's aunt had the family failing of
indulging in soliloquy, and held forth in a desultory manner, by herself, on
every topic that was introduced. These were few enough, to be sure; but as we
always fell back upon Blood, she had as wide a field for abstract speculation as
her nephew himself.
    We might have been a party of Ogres, the conversation assumed such a
sanguine complexion.
    »I confess I am of Mrs. Waterbrook's opinion,« said Mr. Waterbrook, with his
wine-glass at his eye. »Other things are all very well in their way, but give me
Blood!«
    »Oh! There is nothing,« observed Hamlet's aunt, »so satisfactory to one!
There is nothing that is so much
