the utmost deference being shown by every one, in
all things, to Society. In this same Society (if that were it which came to his
dinners, and to Mrs. Merdle's receptions and concerts), he hardly seemed to
enjoy himself much, and was mostly to be found against walls and behind doors.
Also when he went out to it, instead of its coming home to him, he seemed a
little fatigued, and upon the whole rather more disposed for bed; but he was
always cultivating it nevertheless, and always moving in it, and always laying
out money on it with the greatest liberality.
    Mrs. Merdle's first husband had been a colonel, under whose auspices the
bosom had entered into competition with the snows of North America, and had come
off at little disadvantage in point of whiteness, and at none in point of
coldness. The colonel's son was Mrs. Merdle's only child. He was of a
chuckle-headed high-shouldered make, with a general appearance of being, not so
much a young man as a swelled boy. He had given so few signs of reason, that a
by-word went among his companions that his brain had been frozen up in a mighty
frost which prevailed at St. John's, New Brunswick, at the period of his birth
there, and had never thawed from that hour. Another by-word represented him as
having in his infancy, through the negligence of a nurse, fallen out of a high
window on his head, which had been heard by responsible witnesses to crack. It
is probable that both these representations were of ex post facto origin; the
young gentleman (whose expressive name was Sparkler) being monomaniacal in
offering marriage to all manner of undesirable young ladies, and in remarking of
every successive young lady to whom he tendered a matrimonial proposal that she
was »a doosed fine gal - well educated too - with no biggodd nonsense about
her.«
    A son-in-law, with these limited talents, might have been a clog upon
another man; but Mr. Merdle did not want a son-in-law for himself; he wanted a
son-in-law for Society. Mr. Sparkler having been in the Guards, and being in the
habit of frequenting all the races, and all the lounges, and all the parties,
and being well known, Society was satisfied with its son-in-law. This happy
result Mr. Merdle would have considered well attained, though Mr. Sparkler had
been a more expensive article. And