If you wait in the drawing-room, kicking your heels for an hour after the appointed time, although you arrived to a _minute_, as every Christian does, you may be sure that somebody who patronizes the gentility-monger, probably the Honourable Mr Sniftky, is expected, and has not come. It is vain for you to attempt to talk to your host, hostess, or miss, who are absorbed, body and soul, in expectation of Honourable Sniftky; the propriety-faced people in the yellow waistcoats attitudinize in groups about the room, putting one pump out, drawing the other in, inserting the thumb gracefully in the arm-hole of the yellow waistcoats, and talking _icicles_; the young fellows play with a sprig of lily-of-the-valley in a button-hole--admire a flowing portrait of miss, asking one another if it is not very like--or hang over the back of a chair of one of the turbaned ladies, who gives good evening parties; the host receives a great many compliments upon one thing and another, from some of the professed diners-out, who take every opportunity of paying for their dinner beforehand; every body freezes with the chilling sensation of dinner deferred, and "curses, not loud but deep," are imprecated on the Honourable Sniftky. At last, a prolonged _rat-tat-tat_ announces the arrival of the noble beast, the lion of the evening; the Honourable Sniftky, who is a junior clerk in the Foreign Office, is announced by the footman out of livery, (for the day,) and announces himself a minute after: he comes in a long-tailed coat and boots, to show his contempt for his entertainers, and mouths a sort of apology for keeping his betters waiting, which is received by the gentility-monger, his lady, and miss, with nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles of unqualified admiration and respect.
As the order of precedence at the house of a gentility-monger is not strictly understood, the host desires Honourable Sniftky to take down miss; and calling out the names of the other guests, like muster-master of the guards, pairs them, and sends them down to the dining-room, where you find the nephew, or family doctor, (or whatever he is,) who has inspected the arrangement of the table, already in waiting.
You take your place, not without that excess of ceremony that distinguishes the table of a gentility-monger; the Honourable Sniftky, _ex-officio_, takes his place between mamma and miss, glancing vacancy round the table, lest any body should think himself especially honoured by a fixed stare; covers are removed by the mob of occasional waiters in attendance, and white soup and brown soup, thick and heavy as judges of assize, go circuit.