In addition to the Crawley family, which a six o'clock dinner-bell assembled at Mount Crawley, were a few guests supplied by the situation of the country, and the circumstances of the neighbourhood. They consisted of two barristers, friends, and (in their respective ways) toadies of the young counsellor: two protectees of Mr. Crawley senior, bearing the official dignities of sub-/sheriff and port surveyor; two country gentlemen, tenants of the Marquis of Dunore, (the one of an ancient Catholic, the other of a respectable Protestant family): and the brigade-major of the district, who, from his strict adherence to the prudent rule of never dancing with the daughter where he had not dined with the father, had obtained from the wits of Dunore, the sobriquet of the ‘cut-mutton-jig-major.’

Of the two barristers, the elder was one of that class termed in London Old Bailey counsel. He piqued himself principally upon the vulgarity of his humour, and the coarseness of his address; wore a coat well powdered and ill brushed; and laughed at the legal coxcombs, who sought to get rid of the dust of the courts, before they sat down to a circuit dinner. He might, however, be said rather to entertain the bar than to practise at it; and to pick up on the circuit more jokes than / briefs. He was now a sort of hanger-on – a proneur titré of Mr. Conway Crawley, and was always contented to swallow the insolent superiority of the son, so long as he was permitted to swallow with it the claret of the father. The other barrister, more timid and more gentleman-like, followed in the track of the young legal Bobadil from genuine admiration, and with a firm resolve to adopt his course, and to trace his steps to promotion, whatever path he might take, indolently reposed on his higher genius for his own future fortunes, and catered applause for talents he emulated, the jackall of another's vanity.