himself most certainly did,
because he went to sleep immediately after dinner. Mr. Hicks and the
ladies discoursed most eloquently about poetry, and the theatres, and
Lord Chesterfield's Letters; and Mr. Calton followed up what everybody
said, with continuous double knocks. Mrs. Tibbs highly approved of every
observation that fell from Mrs. Maplesone; and as Mr. Simpson sat with a
smile upon his face and said 'Yes,' or 'Certainly,' at intervals of about
four minutes each, he received full credit for understanding what was
going forward. The gentlemen rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room
very shortly after they had left the dining-parlour. Mrs. Maplesone and
Mr. Calton played cribbage, and the 'young people' amused themselves with
music and conversation. The Miss Maplesones sang the most fascinating
duets, and accompanied themselves on guitars, ornamented with bits of
ethereal blue ribbon. Mr. Simpson put on a pink waistcoat, and said he
was in raptures; and Mr. Hicks felt in the seventh heaven of poetry or
the seventh canto of Don Juan--it was the same thing to him. Mrs. Tibbs
was quite charmed with the newcomers; and Mr. Tibbs spent the evening in
his usual way--he went to sleep, and woke up, and went to sleep again,
and woke at supper-time.

* * * * *

We are not about to adopt the licence of novel-writers, and to let 'years
roll on;' but we will take the liberty of requesting the reader to
suppose that six months have elapsed, since the dinner we have described,
and that Mrs. Tibbs's boarders have, during that period, sang, and
danced, and gone to theatres and exhibitions, together, as ladies and
gentlemen, wherever they board, often do. And we will beg them, the
period we have mentioned having elapsed, to imagine farther, that Mr.
Septimus Hicks received, in his own bedroom (a front attic), at an early
hour one morning, a note from Mr. Calton, requesting the favour of seeing
him, as soon as convenient to himself, in his (Calton's) dressing-room on
the second-floor back.

'Tell Mr. Calton I'll come down directly,' said Mr. Septimus to the boy.
'Stop--is Mr. Calton unwell?' inquired this excited walker of hospitals,
as he put on a bed-furniture-looking dressing-gown.

'Not as I knows on, sir,' replied the boy. ' Please, sir, he looked
rather rum, as it might be.'

'Ah, that's no proof of his being ill,' returned Hicks, unconsciously.
'Very well: I'll be down directly.'