"Give the young men their
pleasures," this worthy guardian said to Pen more than once. "I'm not
one of your straight-laced moralists, but an old man of the world,
begad; and I know that as long as it lasts, young men will be young
men." And there were some young men to whom this estimable philosopher
accorded about seventy years as the proper period for sowing their
wild oats: but they were men of fashion.
Mr. Foker drove his lovely guests home to Brompton in the drag that
night; but he was quite thoughtful and gloomy during the whole of the
little journey from Richmond; neither listening to the jokes of the
friends behind him and on the box by his side, nor enlivening them, as
was his wont, by his own facetious sallies. And when the ladies whom
he had conveyed alighted at the door of their house, and asked then
accomplished coachman whether he would not step in and take some thing
to drink, he declined with so melancholy an air, that they supposed
that the governor and he had had a difference, or that some calamity
had befallen him: and he did not tell these people what the cause of
his grief was, but left Mesdames Rougemont and Calverley, unheeding
the cries of the latter, who hung over her balcony like Jezebel, and
called out to him to ask him to give another party soon.
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