'The world is growing familiar,' said Mr. Annesley.
'There must be some remedy,' said Lord Darrell.
'Yes!' said Lord Squib, with indignation. 'Tradesmen now-a-days console
themselves for not getting their bills paid by asking their customers to
dinner.'
'It is shocking,' said Mr. Annesley, with a forlorn air. 'Do you know,
I never enter society now without taking as many preliminary precautions
as if the plague raged in all our chambers. In vain have I hitherto
prided myself on my existence being unknown to the million. I never now
stand still in a street, lest my portrait be caught for a lithograph;
I never venture to a strange dinner, lest I should stumble upon a
fashionable novelist; and even with all this vigilance, and all this
denial, I have an intimate friend whom I cannot cut, and who, they say,
writes for the Court Journal.'
'But why cannot you cut him?' asked Lord Darrell.
'He is my brother; and, you know, I pride myself upon my domestic
feelings.'
'Yes!' said Lord Squib, 'to judge from what the world says, one would
think, Annesley, you were a Brummel!'
'Squib, not even in jest couple my name with one whom I will not call a
savage, merely because he is unfortunate.
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