my head, and
that made the cloth catch on old Lady Farrington's cap--she had to sit
on my side of the table, to be out of the draught--and, wasn't it
_dreadful_, it almost pulled it off, and with it the grey curls fixed
at the side, and the rest was all bald. So that was why it was so
loose--there was nothing to pin it to! And she glared at me, and fixed
it as straight as she could, but it had such a saucy look all the rest
of the evening.

I did apologise as well as I could, and there was such an awkward
pause; and after dinner we had coffee in the drawing-room, and then in
a little time tea, and between times they sat down to whist, all but
Aunt Maria--so they had to have a dummy. She wanted to hear all about
you, she said, and my going to visit in France; and so I had to bellow
descriptions of your neuralgia, and about Mme. de Croixmare being my
godmother, &c., and Aunt Maria says, "Tut, tut!" as well as "Eh!
what?" to everything. I had not remembered a bit what they were like;
but I was only six, wasn't I, when we came last?

After she had asked every sort of thing about you under the sun, she
kept giving longing glances at the dummy's cards; so I said, "Oh! Aunt
Maria, I am afraid I am keeping you from your whist." As soon as I
could make her hear, you should have seen how she hopped up like a
two-year-old into the vacant seat; and they were far more serious about
it than any one was at Nazeby, where they had hundreds on, and Aunt
Maria and the others only played for counters--that long
mother-o'-pearl fish kind. I looked at a book on the table, Lady
Blessington's "Book of Beauty," and I see then every one got born with
champagne-bottle shoulders. Had they been paring them for generations
before, I wonder? Because old John, the keeper at Hendon, told me once
that the best fox-terriers arrive now without any tails, their mothers'
and grand-mothers' and great-grandmothers' having been cut off for so
long; but I wonder, if the fashion changed, how could they get long
tails again? There must be some way, because all of us now have square
shoulders. But what was I saying? Oh! yes, when I had finished the
"Beauty Book," I heard Aunt Maria getting so cross with the old boy
opposite her. "You've revoked, Major Orwell," she said, whatever that
means.

[Sidenote: _An Old English Dinner_]

Then hot spiced port came in--it was such a close night--and they all
had some, and so did I, and it was good; and then candles came.