ht o'clock--an' we'll 'ave a talk."

"The child," said Mr. Mortimer, "has evidently something up her sleeve,
and my advice is that we humour her."

Tilda eyed him.

"Yes, that's right," she assented with unmoved countenance. "'Ave in
supper and 'umour me."

The supper consisted of two dishes--the one of tripe-and-onions, the
other of fried ham. There were also potatoes and beer, and gin, Mr.
Mortimer being a sufferer from some complaint which made this cordial,
as Mrs. Mortimer assured them, "imperative." But to-night, "to
celebrate the reunion," Mr. Mortimer chose to defy the advice of the
many doctors--"specialists" Mrs. Mortimer called them--who had
successively called his a unique case; and after a tough battle--his
wife demurring on hygienic, Sam on financial, grounds--ordered in a
bottle of port, at the same time startling the waitress with the demand
that it must not be such as that--

"She set before chance-comers,
But such whose father-grape grew fat
On Lusitanian summers."

That the beverage fulfilled this condition may be doubted. But it was
certainly sweet and potent, and for the children at any rate a couple of
glasses of it induced a haze upon the feast--a sort of golden fog
through which Mr. Mortimer loomed in a halo of diffusive hospitality.
He used his handkerchief for a table-napkin, and made great play with it
as they do in banquets on the stage.

He pronounced the tripe-and-onions "fit for Lucullus," whatever that
might mean. He commended the flouriness of the potatoes, in the cooking
of which he claimed to be something of an amateur--"being Irish, my dear
Smiles, on my mother's side." He sipped the port and passed it for
"sound, sir, a wine of unmistakable body," though for bouquet not
comparable with the contents of a famous bin once the pride of his
paternal cellars at Scaresby Hall, Northamptonshire. He became
reminiscential, and spoke with a break in his voice of a certain--

"Banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights were fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he [Mr. Mortimer] departed."

Here he wiped his eyes with the handkerchief that had hitherto done duty
for napkin, and passed, himself, with equal adaptability to a new
_role_. He would give them the toast of "Their Youthful Guests."--

"They are, I understand, about to leave us. It is not ours to gaze too
closely into the crystal of fate; nor, as I gather, do they find it
convenient to sp