ted about them. Only the philanthropist's father and
mother--Mr. and Mrs. Ablewhite.

CHAPTER X

One on the top of the other the rest of the company followed the
Ablewhites, till we had the whole tale of them complete. Including the
family, they were twenty-four in all. It was a noble sight to see, when
they were settled in their places round the dinner-table, and the Rector
of Frizinghall (with beautiful elocution) rose and said grace.

There is no need to worry you with a list of the guests. You will meet
none of them a second time--in my part of the story, at any rate--with
the exception of two.

Those two sat on either side of Miss Rachel, who, as queen of the day,
was naturally the great attraction of the party. On this occasion she
was more particularly the centre-point towards which everybody's
eyes were directed; for (to my lady's secret annoyance) she wore her
wonderful birthday present, which eclipsed all the rest--the Moonstone.
It was without any setting when it had been placed in her hands; but
that universal genius, Mr. Franklin, had contrived, with the help of his
neat fingers and a little bit of silver wire, to fix it as a brooch in
the bosom of her white dress. Everybody wondered at the prodigious size
and beauty of the Diamond, as a matter of course. But the only two of
the company who said anything out of the common way about it were those
two guests I have mentioned, who sat by Miss Rachel on her right hand
and her left.

The guest on her left was Mr. Candy, our doctor at Frizinghall.

This was a pleasant, companionable little man, with the drawback,
however, I must own, of being too fond, in season and out of season, of
his joke, and of his plunging in rather a headlong manner into talk
with strangers, without waiting to feel his way first. In society he was
constantly making mistakes, and setting people unintentionally by
the ears together. In his medical practice he was a more prudent man;
picking up his discretion (as his enemies said) by a kind of instinct,
and proving to be generally right where more carefully conducted doctors
turned out to be wrong.

What HE said about the Diamond to Miss Rachel was said, as usual, by way
of a mystification or joke. He gravely entreated her (in the interests
of science) to let him take it home and burn it. "We will first heat it,
Miss Rachel," says the doctor, "to such and such a degree; then we
will expose it to a current of air; and, little by