entering the house, read, with strained eyeballs, the card deposited that morning by the Flybekins, and with some such an expression of countenance as one may be supposed to assume in discovering something in a drawer more than was anticipated.  “Umph!” said the peer, “the Flybekins in town! what could have brought them up so far from the country?” “Something that will not detain them long, I hope;” dryly answered Lady B.  “Yet, we must take some notice of these country cousins,” said the peer:  “Let us invite them to a family dinner.”  “Well, if we must,”—­said the Countess shrugging her shoulders—­and with that the subject dropped for the time.

Now it is quite clear that however brilliant might have been the prospects of the Flybekins, the peer and his lady wished them any where but in London; and, rather than invite them to Grosvenor-square to dinner, the former would have been glad to be let off with a writership for one of the sons in India.

Their carriage was ordered at ten, to convey them to the Duchess of R.’s party, and Lord B. proposed to make a friendly call upon their relations before waiting on Her Grace.  Accordingly thither they drove, accompanied by two footmen bearing flaming flambeaux, the custom of the great in those days, when the town was not so well lighted as in the present age.  The signs of this custom are indeed still to be seen in the extinguishers attached to the railings in front of many houses, which served for the footmen to extinguish their lights.

Meantime the Flybekins slept on, not dreaming of the honour intended them, and were as sound asleep as Duncan in Macbeth’s castle, when a long thundering rap at the door startled them amid their slumbers.  The diminutive, bandy footman had gone home with the coachman and horses, the landlady and her family had followed the example of the lodgers; and before any one could rise to unbar and open the door, to ascertain the cause of such an unusual alarm, a second louder and longer rap had been made upon it, and which awoke the sleepers to an instinctive idea that the house was on fire; a notion confirmed by the strong glare of red light reflected against their windows, and illuminating the apartment, as the footmen impatiently shook thousands of sparks from the flambeaux.

As Bonaparte observed upon another occasion, “From the sublime to the ridiculous is but one step.”  So it was with the Flybekins.  From the most sublime repose they hurried into the ridiculous fire-escapes, in the full conviction that the lower part of the house was on fire; and without waiting to dress, or inquire into the real state of affairs, they gave the signal-word “Now!” and both descended in all the freshness of their fears to the pavement before the door!