ng a Frenchman
without feeling a sort of shame and pity for her. [4]

To return to the guests. The Reverend Lemuel Whey is a tea-party man,
with a curl on his forehead and a scented pocket-handkerchief. He ties
his white neckcloth to a wonder, and I believe sleeps in it. He brings
his flute with him; and prefers Handel, of course; but has one or two
pet profane songs of the sentimental kind, and will occasionally lift
up his little pipe in a glee. He does not dance, but the honest fellow
would give the world to do it; and he leaves his clogs in the passage,
though it is a wonder he wears them, for in the muddiest weather he
never has a speck on his foot. He was at St. John's College, Cambridge,
and was rather gay for a term or two, he says. He is, in a word, full of
the milk-and-water of human kindness, and his family lives near Hackney.

As for Goff, he has a huge shining bald forehead, and immense bristling
Indian-red whiskers. He wears white wash-leather gloves, drinks fairly,
likes a rubber, and has a story for after dinner, beginning, "Doctor, ye
racklackt Sandy M'Lellan, who joined us in the West Indies. Wal, sir,"
etc. These and little Cutler made up the party.

Now it may not have struck all readers, but any sharp fellow conversant
with writing must have found out long ago, that if there had been
something exceedingly interesting to narrate with regard to this dinner
at Frank Berry's, I should have come out with it a couple of pages
since, nor have kept the public looking for so long a time at the
dish-covers and ornaments of the table.

But the simple fact must now be told, that there was nothing of the
slightest importance occurred at this repast, except that it gave me an
opportunity of studying Mrs. Berry in many different ways; and, in spite
of the extreme complaisance which she now showed me, of forming, I am
sorry to say, a most unfavourable opinion of that fair lady. Truth to
tell, I would much rather she should have been civil to Mrs. Muchit,
than outrageously complimentary to your humble servant; and as she
professed not to know what on earth there was for dinner, would it not
have been much more natural for her not to frown, and bob, and wink,
and point, and pinch her lips as often as Monsieur Anatole, her French
domestic, not knowing the ways of English dinner-tables, placed anything
out of its due order? The allusions to Boodle Hall were innumerable,
and I don't know any greater bore than to be o