CHAPTER VII.
YORKE REPORTS PROGRESS.
I trust it will not be imagined, and far less hoped for, by any reader of this sober narrative, that the phrase which concluded the last chapter implies that he or she is about to be introduced to bad company.
The fair sex will not be without their representatives in our story, and that soon; but they will not be such as blushed unseen (if they blushed at all) in the bowers at Crompton.

Mr.Ryll's suggestion, "Let us join the ladies," was only an elegant way he had, and which was well understood by his audience, of proposing an adjournment to the billiard-room.

If that worthy old gentleman could be said to have had any source of income whatever, it was the billiard-table; and hence it was that he was always ready to proceed thither.

Nor had he boasted without reason, a while ago, of his powers of self-denial, for he would often forego a glass of generous wine (when he felt that he had had enough), in order to keep his hand steady for the game at pool, which invariably took place at Crompton after dinner.

His extreme obesity, though it deprived him of some advantages in the way of "reach," was, upon the whole, a benefit to him.