re! Hope you havn't burked your appetites, gentlemen, so as not to
be able to do justice to them--smell high--werry good--gamey, in fact.
Binjimin. take an 'ot plate to Mr. Nimrod--sarve us all round with
them."

The grouse being excellent, and cooked to a turn, little execution was
done upon the pastry, and the jellies had all melted long before it
came to their turn to be eat. At length everyone, Mr. Jorrocks and all,
appeared satisfied, and the noise of knives and forks was succeeded by
the din of tongues and the ringing of glasses, as the eaters refreshed
themselves with wine or malt liquors. Cheese and biscuit being handed
about on plates, according to the _Spirit of Etiquette_. Binjimin and
Batsay at length cleared the table, lifted off the windmill, and removed
the cloth. Mr. Jorrocks then delivered himself of a most emphatic grace.

The wine and dessert being placed on the table, the ceremony of
drinking healths all round was performed. "Your good health, Mrs.
J----.--Belinda, my loove, your good health--wish you a good
'usband.--Nimrod, your good health.--James Green, your good health.--Old
_verd antique's_ good health.--Your uncle's good health.--All the Green
family.--Stubbs, your good health.--Spiers, Crane, etc." The bottles
then pass round three times, on each of which occasions Mrs. Jorrocks
makes them pay toll. The fourth time she let them pass; and Jorrocks
began to grunt, hem, and haw, and kick the leg of the table, by way of
giving her a hint to depart. This caused a dead silence, which at length
was broken by the Yorkshireman's exclaiming "horrid pause!"

"Horrid paws!" vociferated Mrs. J----, in a towering rage, "so would
yours, let me tell you, sir, if you had helped to cook all that dinner":
and gathering herself up and repeating the words "horrid paws, indeed,
I like your imperence," she sailed out of the room like an exasperated
turkey-cock; her face, from heat, anger, and the quantity she had drank,
being as red as her gown. Indeed, she looked for all the world as if she
had been put into a furnace and blown red hot. Jorrocks having got rid
of his "worser half," as he calls her, let out a reef or two of his acre
of white waistcoat, and each man made himself comfortable according to
his acceptation of the term. "Gentlemen," says Jorrocks, "I'll trouble
you to charge your glasses, 'eel-taps off--a bumper toast--no
skylights, if you please. Crane, pass the wine--you are a regular
old stop-bottle