Square. Doubleday knew how to make himself comfortable, evidently.
There were one or two good prints on his walls, a cheerful fire in the
hearth, a sofa and an easy-chair, and quite an array of pickle-jars and
beer-bottles and jam-pots in his cupboard. And, to my thinking, who had
been used to the plain, unappetising fare of Mrs Nash, the spread on
his table was simply sumptuous.

I felt quite shy at being introduced to such an entertainment, and
inwardly wondered how long it would be before I, with my eight shillings
a week, would be able to afford the like.

We were a little early, and Doubleday therefore pressed us into the
service to help him, as he called it, "get all snug and ship-shape,"
which meant boiling some eggs, emptying the jam-pots into glass dishes,
and cutting up a perfect stack of bread.

"Who's coming to-night?" said Crow, with whom, by the way, I had become
speedily reconciled in our mutual occupation.

"Oh, the usual lot," said Doubleday, with the air of a man who gives
"feeds" every day of his life. "The two Wickhams, and Joe Whipcord, and
the Field-Marshal, and an Irish fellow who is lodging with him. We
ought to have a jolly evening."

In due time the guests arrived, Mr Joseph Whipcord being the earliest.
He was a freckled youth of a most horsey get up, in clothes so tight
that it seemed a marvel how he could ever sit down, and a straw in his
mouth which appeared to grow there. Close on his heels came the two
Wickhams, whose chief attractiveness seemed to be that they were twins,
and as like as two peas.

"Hullo! here you are," was Doubleday's greeting. "Which is which of you
to-night, eh?"

"I'm Adam," replied one of the two, meekly.

"All serene, Adam. Stick this piece of paper in your button-hole, and
then we'll know you from Abel. By the way, Whipcord, I suppose you
never heard my last joke, did you?"

"Never heard your first yet," replied Whipcord, shifting his straw to
the other corner of his mouth.

"Oh, yes you did," retorted Doubleday, who as usual always preferred the
laugh when it was on his own side. "Don't you remember me telling Crow
last time you came that you were a fellow who knew a thing or two? That
was a joke, eh, twins?"

"Rather," said both the twins, warmly.

"But my last wasn't about Whipcord at all: it was about you two. I got
muddled up among you somehow and said, `For the life of me I am not able
to tell one of you from Adam!'"

"Well?" sai