sted from two to four; but the ordinary luncheon of
the family was a snack from the servants' joint or the children's rice
pudding; and five o'clock tea had only lately been invented. To
remember, as I just can, the Foundress[20] of that divine refreshment
seems like having known Stephenson or Jenner.

Dinner was substantial enough in all conscience, and the wine nearly as
heavy as the food. Imagine quenching one's thirst with sherry in the
dog-days! Yet so we did, till about half-way through dinner, and then,
on great occasions, a dark-coloured rill of champagne began to trickle
into the V-shaped glasses. At the epoch of cheese, port made its
appearance in company with home-brewed beer; and, as soon as the ladies
and the schoolboys departed, the men applied themselves, with much
seriousness of purpose, to the consumption of claret which was really
vinous.

Grace was said before and after dinner. There was a famous squire in
Hertfordshire whose love of his dinner was constantly at war with his
pietistic traditions. He always had his glass of sherry poured out
before he sat down to dinner, so that he might get at it without a
moment's delay. One night, in his generous eagerness, he upset the glass
just as he dropped into his seat at the end of grace, and the formula
ran on to an unexpected conclusion, thus: "For what we are going to
receive, the Lord make us truly thankful--D--n!" But if the
incongruities which attended grace before dinner were disturbing, still
more so were the solemnities of the close. Grace after dinner always
happened at the moment of loudest and most general conversation. For an
hour and a half people had been stuffing as if their lives depended on
it--"one feeding like forty." Out of the abundance of the mouth the
heart speaketh, and everyone was talking at once, and very loud. Perhaps
the venue was laid in a fox-hunting country, and then the air was full
of such voices as these: "Were you out with the Squire to-day?" "Any
sport?" "Yes, we'd rather a nice gallop." "Plenty of the animal about, I
hope?" "Well, I don't know. I believe that new keeper at Boreham Wood is
a vulpicide. I don't half like his looks." "What an infernal villain! A
man who would shoot a fox would poison his own grandmother." "Sh! Sh!"
"What's the matter?"

"_For what we have received_," &c.

"Do you know you've been talking at the top of your voice all the time
grace was going on?"

"Not really? I'm awfully sorry. But ou