ith him and
announce him. Lord Decimus being an overpowering peer, a bashful young
member of the Lower House who was the last fish but one caught by the
Barnacles, and who had been invited on this occasion to commemorate his
capture, shut his eyes when his Lordship came in.

Lord Decimus, nevertheless, was glad to see the Member. He was also
glad to see Mr Merdle, glad to see Bishop, glad to see Bar, glad to see
Physician, glad to see Tite Barnacle, glad to see Chorus, glad to
see Ferdinand his private secretary. Lord Decimus, though one of the
greatest of the earth, was not remarkable for ingratiatory manners, and
Ferdinand had coached him up to the point of noticing all the fellows
he might find there, and saying he was glad to see them. When he had
achieved this rush of vivacity and condescension, his Lordship composed
himself into the picture after Cuyp, and made a third cow in the group.

Bar, who felt that he had got all the rest of the jury and must now lay
hold of the Foreman, soon came sidling up, double eye-glass in hand. Bar
tendered the weather, as a subject neatly aloof from official reserve,
for the Foreman's consideration. Bar said that he was told (as everybody
always is told, though who tells them, and why, will ever remain a
mystery), that there was to be no wall-fruit this year. Lord Decimus
had not heard anything amiss of his peaches, but rather believed, if his
people were correct, he was to have no apples. No apples? Bar was lost
in astonishment and concern. It would have been all one to him, in
reality, if there had not been a pippin on the surface of the earth, but
his show of interest in this apple question was positively painful.
Now, to what, Lord Decimus--for we troublesome lawyers loved to gather
information, and could never tell how useful it might prove to us--to
what, Lord Decimus, was this to be attributed? Lord Decimus could not
undertake to propound any theory about it. This might have stopped
another man; but Bar, sticking to him fresh as ever, said, 'As to pears,
now?'

Long after Bar got made Attorney-General, this was told of him as
a master-stroke. Lord Decimus had a reminiscence about a pear-tree
formerly growing in a garden near the back of his dame's house at Eton,
upon which pear-tree the only joke of his life perennially bloomed. It
was a joke of a compact and portable nature, turning on the difference
between Eton pears and Parliamentary pairs; but it was a joke, a refined