Though of course, as you say," I would hasten to add,
"this yellow on the thin paper is more rare."
Indeed I must certainly have been detected, had I not
plied Mr. Denman in self-defence with his favourite
liquor--a port so excellent that it could never have
ripened in the cellar of the Carthew Arms, but must
have been transported, under cloud of night, from the
neighbouring vaults of the great house. At each threat
of exposure, and in particular whenever I was directly
challenged for an opinion, I made haste to fill the
butler's glass, and by the time we had got to the
exchanges, he was in a condition in which no stamp-
collector need be seriously feared. God forbid I
should hint that he was drunk; he seemed incapable of
the necessary liveliness; but the man's eyes were set,
and so long as he was suffered to talk without
interruption, he seemed careless of my heeding him.
In Mr. Denman's exchanges, as in those of little Agnes,
the same peculiarity was to be remarked,--an undue
preponderance of that despicably common stamp, the
French twenty-five centimes.
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