phasis, is most distinctly
heard by everybody present.

A pause ensued, before the table was replenished--a sort of parenthesis
in which Mr. Simpson, Mr. Calton, and Mr. Hicks, produced respectively a
bottle of sauterne, bucellas, and sherry, and took wine with
everybody--except Tibbs. No one ever thought of him.

Between the fish and an intimated sirloin, there was a prolonged
interval.

Here was an opportunity for Mr. Hicks. He could not resist the
singularly appropriate quotation--

'But beef is rare within these oxless isles;
Goats' flesh there is, no doubt, and kid, and mutton,
And when a holiday upon them smiles,
A joint upon their barbarous spits they put on.'

'Very ungentlemanly behaviour,' thought little Mrs. Tibbs, 'to talk in
that way.'

'Ah,' said Mr. Calton, filling his glass. 'Tom Moore is my poet.'

'And mine,' said Mrs. Maplesone.

'And mine,' said Miss Julia.

'And mine,' added Mr. Simpson.

'Look at his compositions,' resumed the knocker.

'To be sure,' said Simpson, with confidence.

'Look at Don Juan,' replied Mr. Septimus Hicks.

'Julia's letter,' suggested Miss Matilda.

'Can anything be grander than the Fire Worshippers?' inquired Miss Julia.

'To be sure,' said Simpson.

'Or Paradise and the Peri,' said the old beau.

'Yes; or Paradise and the Peer,' repeated Simpson, who thought he was
getting through it capitally.

'It's all very well,' replied Mr. Septimus Hicks, who, as we have before
hinted, never had read anything but Don Juan. 'Where will you find
anything finer than the description of the siege, at the commencement of
the seventh canto?'

'Talking of a siege,' said Tibbs, with a mouthful of bread--'when I was
in the volunteer corps, in eighteen hundred and six, our commanding
officer was Sir Charles Rampart; and one day, when we were exercising on
the ground on which the London University now stands, he says, says he,
Tibbs (calling me from the ranks), Tibbs--'

'Tell your master, James,' interrupted Mrs. Tibbs, in an awfully distinct
tone, 'tell your master if he _won't_ carve those fowls, to send them to
me.' The discomfited volunteer instantly set to work, and carved the
fowls almost as expeditiously as his wife operated on the haunch of
mutton. Whether he ever finished the story is not known but, if he did,
nobody heard it.

As the ice was now broken, and the new inmates more at home, every member
of the company felt more at ease. Tibbs