spended above the centre; and,
as Mr Tomkins told me afterwards, the lamps were red and yellow,
according to the fruit they bore. It was a cold, frosty, clear night,
and the lamps twinkled as brightly among the bare boughs of the
gooseberry trees as the stars did in the heavens. The company in
general were quite charmed with the novelty. "Quite a _minor
Wauxhall_," cried one lady, whose exuberance of fat kept her warm enough
to allow her to stare about in the open air. The entrance porch had a
dozen little lamps, backed with laurel twigs, and looked very imposing.
Mrs Tomkins received her company upon the steps outside, that she might
have the pleasure of hearing their praises of her external arrangements;
still it was freezing, and she shivered not a little. The drawing-room,
fourteen feet by ten, was fitted up as a ballroom, with two fiddlers and
a fifer sitting in a corner and a country-dance was performing when we
arrived. Over the mantle-piece was a square of laurel twigs, inclosing
as a frame this couplet from the poetical brain of the master of the
house, cut out in red paper, and bespangled with blue and yellow
tinsel--

"Here we are to dance so gay,
While the fiddlers play away."

Other appropriate distichs, which I have now forgotten, were framed in
the same way on each of the other compartments. But the dining-room was
the _chef d'oeuvre_. It was formed into a bower, with evergreens, and
on the evergreen boughs were stuck real apples and oranges in all
directions, so that you could help yourself.

"Vell, I do declare, this is a paradise!" exclaimed the fat lady who
entered with me.

"In all but one thing, ma'am," replied Mr Turnbull, who, with his coat
off, was squeezing lemons for the punch--"there's no _forbidden_ fruit.
You may help yourself."

The bon-mot was repeated by Mr Tomkins to the end of his existence, not
only for its own sake, but because it gave him an opportunity of
entering into a detail of the whole _fete_--the first he had ever given
in his life. "Ah, Jacob, my boy, glad to see you--come and help here--
they'll soon be thirsty, I'll warrant," said Mr Turnbull, who was in
his glory. The company, although not so very select, were very happy;
they danced, drank punch, laughed, and danced again; and it was not till
a late hour, long after Mr and Mrs Drummond had gone home, that I
quitted the "festive scene;" Mr Turnbull, who walked away with me,
declaring that it was worth