I was not at all remorseful for having unwittingly set

those other branches of the Pocket family to the poor arts they

practised: because such littlenesses were their natural bent, and

would have been evoked by anybody else, if I had left them

slumbering. But Herbert's was a very different case, and it often

caused me a twinge to think that I had done him evil service in

crowding his sparely-furnished chambers with incongruous upholstery

work, and placing the canary-breasted Avenger at his disposal.

So now, as an infallible way of making little ease great ease, I

began to contract a quantity of debt. I could hardly begin but

Herbert must begin too, so he soon followed. At Startop's

suggestion, 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 realized

Capital towards midnight; and that at 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, his

tumbling out in life somewhere, was a thing to transact itself

somehow. In the meantime Mr. Pocket grew greyer, and tried oftener

to lift himself out of his perplexities by the hair. While Mrs.

Pocket tripped up the family with her footstool, read her book of

dignities, lost her pocket-handkerchief, told us about her

grandpapa, and taught the young idea how to shoot, by shooting it

into bed whenever it attracted her notice.

As I am now generalizing a period of my life with the object of

clearing my way before me, I can scarcely do so better than by at

once completing the description of our usual manners and customs at

Barnard's Inn.

We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as

people could make up their minds to give us.