uld be a fatal consummation. Aware of her enemy, Lady Tippins
tries a youthful sally or two, and tries the eye-glass; but, from the
impenetrable cap and snorting armour of the stoney aunt all weapons
rebound powerless.

Another objectionable circumstance is, that the pokey unknowns support
each other in being unimpressible. They persist in not being frightened
by the gold and silver camels, and they are banded together to defy
the elaborately chased ice-pails. They even seem to unite in some vague
utterance of the sentiment that the landlord and landlady will make a
pretty good profit out of this, and they almost carry themselves
like customers. Nor is there compensating influence in the adorable
bridesmaids; for, having very little interest in the bride, and none
at all in one another, those lovely beings become, each one of her own
account, depreciatingly contemplative of the millinery present; while
the bridegroom's man, exhausted, in the back of his chair, appears to be
improving the occasion by penitentially contemplating all the wrong he
has ever done; the difference between him and his friend Eugene, being,
that the latter, in the back of HIS chair, appears to be contemplating
all the wrong he would like to do--particularly to the present company.

In which state of affairs, the usual ceremonies rather droop and flag,
and the splendid cake when cut by the fair hand of the bride has but
an indigestible appearance. However, all the things indispensable to
be said are said, and all the things indispensable to be done are
done (including Lady Tippins's yawning, falling asleep, and waking
insensible), and there is hurried preparation for the nuptial journey
to the Isle of Wight, and the outer air teems with brass bands and
spectators. In full sight of whom, the malignant star of the Analytical
has pre-ordained that pain and ridicule shall befall him. For he,
standing on the doorsteps to grace the departure, is suddenly caught a
most prodigious thump on the side of his head with a heavy shoe, which
a Buffer in the hall, champagne-flushed and wild of aim, has borrowed on
the spur of the moment from the pastrycook's porter, to cast after the
departing pair as an auspicious omen.

So they all go up again into the gorgeous drawing-rooms--all of them
flushed with breakfast, as having taken scarlatina sociably--and there
the combined unknowns do malignant things with their legs to ottomans,
and take as much as possible out