er. As Mrs. Peedles explained,
and as one could well credit, it had been an awkward position for all
present. Nobody had quite known whether to feel glad or sorry--with the
exception of the chief mourner, upon whose personal undertaking that the
company might regard the ceremony as merely postponed, festivities came
to an end.

Our prop and stay from a convivial point of view was Jarman. As
a delicate attention to Mrs. Peedles and her costume he sunk
his nationality and became for the evening, according to his own
declaration, "a braw laddie." With her--his "sonsie lassie," so he
termed her--he flirted in the broadest, if not purest, Scotch. The
O'Kelly for him became "the Laird;" the third floor "Jamie o' the Ilk;"
Miss Sellars, "the bonnie wee rose;" myself, "the chiel." Periods of
silence were dispersed by suggestions that we should "hoot awa'," Jarman
himself setting us the example.

With the clearance away of the eatables, making room for the production
of a more varied supply of bottles, matters began to mend. Mrs. Peedles
became more arch, Jarman's Scotch more striking and extensive, the
Lady 'Ortensia's remarks less depressingly genteel, her aitches less
accentuated.

Jarman rose to propose the health of the O'Kelly, coupled with that of
the Signora. To the O'Kelly, in a burst of generosity, Jarman promised
our united patronage. To Jarman it appeared that by employing the
O'Kelly to defend us whenever we got into trouble with the police, and
by recommending him to our friends, a steady income should be assured to
him.

The O'Kelly replied feelingly to the effect that Nelson Square,
Blackfriars, would ever remain engraved upon his memory as the fairest
and brightest spot on earth. Personally, nothing would have given him
greater pleasure than to die among the dear friends who now surrounded
him. But there was such a thing as duty, and he and the Signora had come
to the conclusion that true happiness could only be obtained by acting
according to one's conscience, even if it made one miserable.

Jarman, warming to his work, then proposed the health of Mrs. Peedles,
as true-hearted and hard-breathing a lady as ever it had been his
privilege to know. Her talent for cheery conversation was familiar to us
all, upon it he need not enlarge; all he would say was that personally
never did she go out of his room without leaving him more cheerful than
when she entered it.

After that--I forget in what--we drank the h