 we put ourselves down for election
into a club called the Finches of the Grove: the object of which institution I
have never divined, if it were not that the members should dine expensively once
a fortnight, to quarrel among themselves as much as possible after dinner, and
to cause six waiters to get drunk on the stairs. I know that these gratifying
social ends were so invariably accomplished, that Herbert and I understood
nothing else to be referred to in the first standing toast of the society: which
ran, »Gentlemen, may the present promotion of good feeling ever reign
predominant among the Finches of the Grove.«
    The Finches spent their money foolishly (the Hotel we dined at was in Covent
Garden), and the first Finch I saw when I had the honour of joining the Grove
was Bentley Drummle: at that time floundering about town in a cab of his own,
and doing a great deal of damage to the posts at the street corners.
Occasionally, he shot himself out of his equipage head-foremost over the apron;
and I saw him on one occasion deliver himself at the door of the Grove in this
unintentional way - like coals. But here I anticipate a little, for I was not a
Finch, and could not be, according to the sacred laws of the society, until I
came of age.
    In my confidence in my own resources, I would willingly have taken Herbert's
expenses on myself; but Herbert was proud, and I could make no such proposal to
him. So, he got into difficulties in every direction, and continued to look
about him. When we gradually fell into keeping late hours and late company, I
noticed that he looked about him with a desponding eye at breakfast-time; that
he began to look about him more hopefully about mid-day; that he drooped when he
came into dinner; that he seemed to descry Capital in the distance, rather
clearly, after dinner; that he all but realised Capital towards midnight; and
that about two o'clock in the morning, he became so deeply despondent again as
to talk of buying a rifle and going to America, with a general purpose of
compelling buffaloes to make his fortune.
    I was usually at Hammersmith about half the week, and when I was at
Hammersmith I haunted Richmond: whereof separately by-and-by. Herbert would
often come to Hammersmith when I was there, and I think at those seasons his
father would occasionally have some passing perception that the opening he was
looking for had not appeared yet. But in the general tumbling up of the family
