It happened that as he sat that evening all alone in his counting-
house, looking over the bill of fare for next day, and checking off
the fat capons in fifties, and the turtle-soup by the hundred
quarts, for his private amusement, - it happened that as he sat
alone occupied in these pleasant calculations, a strange man came
in and asked him how he did, adding, 'If I am half as much changed
as you, sir, you have no recollection of me, I am sure.'
The strange man was not over and above well dressed, and was very
far from being fat or rich-looking in any sense of the word, yet he
spoke with a kind of modest confidence, and assumed an easy,
gentlemanly sort of an air, to which nobody but a rich man can
lawfully presume. Besides this, he interrupted the good citizen
just as he had reckoned three hundred and seventy-two fat capons,
and was carrying them over to the next column; and as if that were
not aggravation enough, the learned recorder for the city of London
had only ten minutes previously gone out at that very same door,
and had turned round and said, 'Good night, my lord.' Yes, he had
said, 'my lord;' - he, a man of birth and education, of the
Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law, - he who
had an uncle in the House of Commons, and an aunt almost but not
quite in the House of Lords (for she had married a feeble peer, and
made him vote as she liked), - he, this man, this learned recorder,
had said, 'my lord.
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