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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Little Dinner at Timmins's, by
+William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Little Dinner at Timmins's
+
+Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+Release Date: May 27, 2006 [EBook #2859]
+Last Updated: March 5, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S.
+
+
+by William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Fitzroy Timmins live in Lilliput Street, that neat little
+street which runs at right angles with the Park and Brobdingnag Gardens.
+It is a very genteel neighborhood, and I need not say they are of a good
+family.
+
+Especially Mrs. Timmins, as her mamma is always telling Mr. T. They are
+Suffolk people, and distantly related to the Right honorable the Earl of
+Bungay.
+
+Besides his house in Lilliput Street, Mr. Timmins has chambers in
+Fig-tree Court, Temple, and goes the Northern Circuit.
+
+The other day, when there was a slight difference about the payment of
+fees between the great Parliamentary Counsel and the Solicitors, Stoke
+and Pogers, of Great George Street, sent the papers of the Lough Foyle
+and Lough Corrib Junction Railway to Mr. Fitzroy Timmins, who was so
+elated that he instantly purchased a couple of looking-glasses for his
+drawing-rooms (the front room is 16 by 12, and the back, a tight but
+elegant apartment, 10 ft. 6 by 8 ft. 4), a coral for the baby, two
+new dresses for Mrs. Timmins, and a little rosewood desk, at the
+Pantechnicon, for which Rosa had long been sighing, with crumpled legs,
+emerald-green and gold morocco top, and drawers all over.
+
+Mrs. Timmins is a very pretty poetess (her “Lines to a Faded Tulip” and
+her “Plaint of Plinlimmon” appeared in one of last year's Keepsakes);
+and Fitzroy, as he impressed a kiss on the snowy forehead of his bride,
+pointed out to her, in one of the innumerable pockets of the desk,
+an elegant ruby-tipped pen, and six charming little gilt blank books,
+marked “My Books,” which Mrs. Fitzroy might fill, he said, (he is an
+Oxford man, and very polite,) “with the delightful productions of her
+Muse.” Besides these books, there was pink paper, paper with crimson
+edges, lace paper, all stamped with R. F. T. (Rosa Fitzroy Timmins)
+and the hand and battle-axe, the crest of the Timminses (and borne at
+Ascalon by Roaldus de Timmins, a crusader, who is now buried in the
+Temple Church, next to Serjeant Snooks), and yellow, pink, light-blue
+and other scented sealing waxes, at the service of Rosa when she chose
+to correspond with her friends.
+
+Rosa, you may be sure, jumped with joy at the sight of this sweet
+present; called her Charles (his first name is Samuel, but they have
+sunk that) the best of men; embraced him a great number of times, to the
+edification of her buttony little page, who stood at the landing; and as
+soon as he was gone to chambers, took the new pen and a sweet sheet of
+paper, and began to compose a poem.
+
+“What shall it be about?” was naturally her first thought. “What should
+be a young mother's first inspiration?” Her child lay on the sofa asleep
+before her; and she began in her neatest hand--
+
+                               “LINES
+
+     “ON MY SON BUNGAY DE BRACY GASHLEIGH TYMMYNS, AGED TEN MONTHS.
+
+                                                        “Tuesday.
+
+          “How beautiful! how beautiful thou seemest,
+             My boy, my precious one, my rosy babe!
+           Kind angels hover round thee, as thou dreamest:
+           Soft lashes hide thy beauteous azure eye which gleamest.”
+
+“Gleamest? thine eye which gleamest? Is that grammar?” thought Rosa, who
+had puzzled her little brains for some time with this absurd question,
+when the baby woke. Then the cook came up to ask about dinner; then Mrs.
+Fundy slipped over from No. 27 (they are opposite neighbors, and made
+an acquaintance through Mrs. Fundy's macaw); and a thousand things
+happened. Finally, there was no rhyme to babe except Tippoo Saib
+(against whom Major Gashleigh, Rosa's grandfather, had distinguished
+himself), and so she gave up the little poem about her De Bracy.
+
+Nevertheless, when Fitzroy returned from chambers to take a walk with
+his wife in the Park, as he peeped through the rich tapestry hanging
+which divided the two drawing-rooms, he found his dear girl still seated
+at the desk, and writing, writing away with her ruby pen as fast as it
+could scribble.
+
+“What a genius that child has!” he said; “why, she is a second Mrs.
+Norton!” and advanced smiling to peep over her shoulder and see what
+pretty thing Rosa was composing.
+
+It was not poetry, though, that she was writing, and Fitz read as
+follows:--
+
+
+“LILLIPUT STREET, Tuesday, 22nd May.
+
+“Mr. and Mr. Fitzroy Tymmyns request the pleasure of Sir Thomas and Lady
+Kicklebury's company at dinner on Wednesday, at 7 1/2 o'clock.”
+
+
+“My dear!” exclaimed the barrister, pulling a long face.
+
+“Law, Fitzroy!” cried the beloved of his bosom, “how you do startle
+one!”
+
+“Give a dinner-party with our means!” said he.
+
+“Ain't you making a fortune, you miser?” Rosa said. “Fifteen guineas a
+day is four thousand five hundred a year; I've calculated it.” And, so
+saying, she rose and taking hold of his whiskers (which are as fine as
+those of any man of his circuit,) she put her mouth close up against his
+and did something to his long face, which quite changed the expression
+of it; and which the little page heard outside the door.
+
+“Our dining-room won't hold ten,” he said.
+
+“We'll only ask twenty, my love. Ten are sure to refuse in this season,
+when everybody is giving parties. Look, here is the list.”
+
+“Earl and Countess of Bungay, and Lady Barbara Saint Mary's.”
+
+“You are dying to get a lord into the house,” Timmins said (HE had
+not altered his name in Fig-tree Court yet, and therefore I am not so
+affected as to call him TYMMYNS).
+
+“Law, my dear, they are our cousins, and must be asked,” Rosa said.
+
+“Let us put down my sister and Tom Crowder, then.”
+
+“Blanche Crowder is really so VERY fat, Fitzroy,” his wife said, “and
+our rooms are so VERY small.”
+
+Fitz laughed. “You little rogue,” he said, “Lady Bungay weighs two of
+Blanche, even when she's not in the f--”
+
+“Fiddlesticks!” Rose cried out. “Doctor Crowder really cannot be
+admitted: he makes such a noise eating his soup, that it is really quite
+disagreeable.” And she imitated the gurgling noise performed by the
+Doctor while inhausting his soup, in such a funny way that Fitz saw
+inviting him was out of the question.
+
+“Besides, we mustn't have too many relations,” Rosa went on. “Mamma,
+of course, is coming. She doesn't like to be asked in the evening; and
+she'll bring her silver bread-basket and her candlesticks, which are
+very rich and handsome.”
+
+“And you complain of Blanche for being too stout!” groaned out Timmins.
+
+“Well, well, don't be in a pet,” said little Rosa. “The girls won't come
+to dinner; but will bring their music afterwards.” And she went on with
+the list.
+
+“Sir Thomas and Lady Kicklebury, 2. No saying no: we MUST ask
+them, Charles. They are rich people, and any room in their house in
+Brobdingnag Gardens would swallow up OUR humble cot. But to people
+in OUR position in SOCIETY they will be glad enough to come. The city
+people are glad to mix with the old families.”
+
+“Very good,” says Fitz, with a sad face of assent--and Mrs. Timmins went
+on reading her list.
+
+“Mr. and Mrs. Topham Sawyer, Belgravine Place.”
+
+“Mrs. Sawyer hasn't asked you all the season. She gives herself the airs
+of an empress; and when--”
+
+“One's Member, you know, my dear, one must have,” Rosa replied, with
+much dignity as if the presence of the representative of her native
+place would be a protection to her dinner. And a note was written
+and transported by the page early next morning to the mansion of the
+Sawyers, in Belgravine Place.
+
+
+The Topham Sawyers had just come down to breakfast; Mrs. T. in her large
+dust-colored morning-dress and Madonna front (she looks rather scraggy
+of a morning, but I promise you her ringlets and figure will stun you of
+an evening); and having read the note, the following dialogue passed:--
+
+Mrs. Topham Sawyer.--“Well, upon my word, I don't know where things will
+end. Mr. Sawyer, the Timminses have asked us to dinner.”
+
+Mr. Topham Sawyer.--“Ask us to dinner! What d----- impudence!”
+
+Mrs. Topham Sawyer.--“The most dangerous and insolent revolutionary
+principles are abroad, Mr. Sawyer; and I shall write and hint as much to
+these persons.”
+
+Mr. Topham Sawyer.--“No, d--- it, Joanna: they are my constituents and
+we must go. Write a civil note, and say we will come to their party.”
+ (He resumes the perusal of 'The times,' and Mrs. Topham Sawyer writes)--
+
+
+“MY DEAR ROSA,--We shall have GREAT PLEASURE in joining your little
+party. I do not reply in the third person, as WE ARE OLD FRIENDS, you
+know, and COUNTRY NEIGHBORS. I hope your mamma is well: present my
+KINDEST REMEMBRANCES to her, and I hope we shall see much MORE of each
+other in the summer, when we go down to the Sawpits (for going abroad is
+out of the question in these DREADFUL TIMES). With a hundred kisses to
+your dear little PET,
+
+“Believe me your attached
+
+“J. T. S.”
+
+
+She said Pet, because she did not know whether Rosa's child was a
+girl or boy: and Mrs. Timmins was very much pleased with the kind and
+gracious nature of the reply to her invitation.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+The next persons whom little Mrs. Timmins was bent upon asking, were
+Mr. and Mrs. John Rowdy, of the firm of Stumpy, Rowdy and Co., of
+Brobdingnag Gardens, of the Prairie, Putney, and of Lombard Street,
+City.
+
+Mrs. Timinins and Mrs. Rowdy had been brought up at the same school
+together, and there was always a little rivalry between them, from the
+day when they contended for the French prize at school to last week,
+when each had a stall at the Fancy Fair for the benefit of the Daughters
+of Decayed Muffin-men; and when Mrs. Timmins danced against Mrs. Rowdy
+in the Scythe Mazurka at the Polish Ball, headed by Mrs. Hugh Slasher.
+Rowdy took twenty-three pounds more than Timmins in the Muffin
+transaction (for she had possession of a kettle-holder worked by the
+hands of R-y-lty, which brought crowds to her stall); but in the Mazurka
+Rosa conquered: she has the prettiest little foot possible (which in
+a red boot and silver heel looked so lovely that even the Chinese
+ambassador remarked it), whereas Mrs. Rowdy's foot is no trifle, as Lord
+Cornbury acknowledged when it came down on his lordship's boot-tip as
+they danced together amongst the Scythes.
+
+“These people are ruining themselves,” said Mrs. John Rowdy to her
+husband, on receiving the pink note. It was carried round by that rogue
+of a buttony page in the evening; and he walked to Brobdingnag Gardens,
+and in the Park afterwards, with a young lady who is kitchen-maid at 27,
+and who is not more than fourteen years older than little Buttons.
+
+“These people are ruining themselves,” said Mrs. John to her husband.
+“Rosa says she has asked the Bungays.”
+
+“Bungays indeed! Timmins was always a tuft-hunter,” said Rowdy, who had
+been at college with the barrister, and who, for his own part, has no
+more objection to a lord than you or I have; and adding, “Hang him, what
+business has HE to be giving parties?” allowed Mrs. Rowdy, nevertheless,
+to accept Rosa's invitation.
+
+“When I go to business to-morrow, I will just have a look at Mr. Fitz's
+account,” Mr. Rowdy thought; “and if it is overdrawn, as it usually is,
+why . . .” The announcement of Mrs. Rowdy's brougham here put an end
+to this agreeable train of thought; and the banker and his lady stepped
+into it to join a snug little family-party of two-and-twenty, given by
+Mr. and Mrs. Secondchop at their great house on the other side of the
+Park.
+
+“Rowdys 2, Bungays 3, ourselves and mamma 3, 2 Sawyers,” calculated
+little Rosa.
+
+“General Gulpin,” Rosa continued, “eats a great deal, and is very
+stupid, but he looks well at table with his star and ribbon. Let us
+put HIM down!” and she noted down “Sir Thomas and Lady Gulpin, 2. Lord
+Castlemouldy, 1.”
+
+“You will make your party abominably genteel and stupid,” groaned
+Timmins. “Why don't you ask some of our old friends? Old Mrs. Portman
+has asked us twenty times, I am sure, within the last two years.”
+
+“And the last time we went there, there was pea-soup for dinner!” Mrs.
+Timmins said, with a look of ineffable scorn.
+
+“Nobody can have been kinder than the Hodges have always been to us; and
+some sort of return we might make, I think.”
+
+“Return, indeed! A pretty sound it is on the staircase to hear 'Mr. and
+Mrs. 'Odge and Miss 'Odges' pronounced by Billiter, who always leaves
+his h's out. No, no: see attorneys at your chambers, my dear--but
+what could the poor creatures do in OUR society?” And so, one by one,
+Timmins's old friends were tried and eliminated by Mrs. Timmins, just as
+if she had been an Irish Attorney-General, and they so many Catholics on
+Mr. Mitchel's jury.
+
+Mrs. Fitzroy insisted that the party should be of her very best company.
+Funnyman, the great wit, was asked, because of his jokes; and Mrs. Butt,
+on whom he practises; and Potter, who is asked because everybody else
+asks him; and Mr. Ranville Ranville of the Foreign Office, who might
+give some news of the Spanish squabble; and Botherby, who has suddenly
+sprung up into note because he is intimate with the French Revolution,
+and visits Ledru-Rollin and Lamartine. And these, with a couple more who
+are amis de la maison, made up the twenty, whom Mrs. Timmins thought she
+might safely invite to her little dinner.
+
+But the deuce of it was, that when the answers to the invitations came
+back, everybody accepted! Here was a pretty quandary. How they were to
+get twenty into their dining-room was a calculation which poor Timmins
+could not solve at all; and he paced up and down the little room in
+dismay.
+
+“Pooh!” said Rosa with a laugh. “Your sister Blanche looked very well in
+one of my dresses last year; and you know how stout she is. We will find
+some means to accommodate them all, depend upon it.”
+
+Mrs. John Rowdy's note to dear Rosa, accepting the latter's invitation,
+was a very gracious and kind one; and Mrs. Fitz showed it to her husband
+when he came back from chambers. But there was another note which had
+arrived for him by this time from Mr. Rowdy--or rather from the firm;
+and to the effect that Mr. F. Timmins had overdrawn his account 28L.
+18s. 6d., and was requested to pay that sum to his obedient servants,
+Stumpy, Rowdy and Co.
+
+*****
+
+And Timmins did not like to tell his wife that the contending parties in
+the Lough Foyle and Lough Corrib Railroad had come to a settlement, and
+that the fifteen guineas a day had consequently determined. “I have had
+seven days of it, though,” he thought; “and that will be enough to
+pay for the desk, the dinner, and the glasses, and make all right with
+Stumpy and Rowdy.”
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+The cards for dinner having been issued, it became the duty of Mrs.
+Timmins to make further arrangements respecting the invitations to the
+tea-party which was to follow the more substantial meal.
+
+These arrangements are difficult, as any lady knows who is in the habit
+of entertaining her friends. There are--
+
+People who are offended if you ask them to tea whilst others have been
+asked to dinner;
+
+People who are offended if you ask them to tea at all; and cry out
+furiously, “Good heavens! Jane my love, why do these Timminses suppose
+that I am to leave my dinner-table to attend their ----- soiree?” (the
+dear reader may fill up the ----- to any strength, according to his
+liking)--or, “Upon my word, William my dear, it is too much to ask us to
+pay twelve shillings for a brougham, and to spend I don't know how
+much in gloves, just to make our curtsies in Mrs. Timmins's little
+drawing-room.” Mrs. Moser made the latter remark about the Timmins
+affair, while the former was uttered by Mr. Grumpley, barrister-at-law,
+to his lady, in Gloucester Place.
+
+That there are people who are offended if you don't ask them at all, is
+a point which I suppose nobody will question. Timmins's earliest friend
+in life was Simmins, whose wife and family have taken a cottage at
+Mortlake for the season.
+
+“We can't ask them to come out of the country,” Rosa said to her
+Fitzroy--(between ourselves, she was delighted that Mrs. Simmins was
+out of the way, and was as jealous of her as every well-regulated woman
+should be of her husband's female friends)--“we can't ask them to come
+so far for the evening.”
+
+“Why, no, certainly.” said Fitzroy, who has himself no very great
+opinion of a tea-party; and so the Simminses were cut out of the list.
+
+And what was the consequence? The consequence was, that Simmins and
+Timmins cut when they met at Westminster; that Mrs. Simmins sent back
+all the books which she had borrowed from Rosa, with a withering note of
+thanks; that Rosa goes about saying that Mrs. Simmins squints; that Mrs.
+S., on her side, declares that Rosa is crooked, and behaved shamefully
+to Captain Hicks in marrying Fitzroy over him, though she was forced to
+do it by her mother, and prefers the Captain to her husband to this day.
+If, in a word, these two men could be made to fight, I believe their
+wives would not be displeased; and the reason of all this misery, rage,
+and dissension, lies in a poor little twopenny dinner-party in Lilliput
+Street.
+
+Well, the guests, both for before and after meat, having been asked,
+old Mrs. Gashleigh, Rosa's mother--(and, by consequence, Fitzroy's
+DEAR mother-in-law, though I promise you that “dear” is particularly
+sarcastic)--Mrs. Gashleigh of course was sent for, and came with Miss
+Eliza Gashleigh, who plays on the guitar, and Emily, who limps a little,
+but plays sweetly on the concertina. They live close by--trust them for
+that. Your mother-in-law is always within hearing, thank our stars for
+the attention of the dear women. The Gashleighs, I say, live close by,
+and came early on the morning after Rosa's notes had been issued for the
+dinner.
+
+When Fitzroy, who was in his little study, which opens into his little
+dining-room--one of those absurd little rooms which ought to be called
+a gentleman's pantry, and is scarcely bigger than a shower-bath, or a
+state cabin in a ship--when Fitzroy heard his mother-in-law's knock,
+and her well-known scuffling and chattering in the passage--in which
+she squeezed up young Buttons, the page, while she put questions to him
+regarding baby, and the cook's health, and whether she had taken what
+Mrs. Gashleigh had sent overnight, and the housemaid's health, and
+whether Mr. Timmins had gone to chambers or not--and when, after this
+preliminary chatter, Buttons flung open the door, announcing--“Mrs.
+Gashleigh and the young ladies,” Fitzroy laid down his Times newspaper
+with an expression that had best not be printed here, and took his hat
+and walked away.
+
+Mrs. Gashleigh has never liked him since he left off calling her mamma,
+and kissing her. But he said he could not stand it any longer--he was
+hanged if he would. So he went away to chambers, leaving the field clear
+to Rosa, mamma, and the two dear girls.
+
+Or to one of them, rather: for before leaving the house, he thought he
+would have a look at little Fitzroy up stairs in the nursery, and he
+found the child in the hands of his maternal aunt Eliza, who was holding
+him and pinching him as if he had been her guitar, I suppose; so that
+the little fellow bawled pitifully--and his father finally quitted the
+premises.
+
+No sooner was he gone, although the party was still a fortnight off,
+than the women pounced upon his little study, and began to put it in
+order. Some of his papers they pushed up over the bookcase, some they
+put behind the Encyclopaedia. Some they crammed into the drawers--where
+Mrs. Gashleigh found three cigars, which she pocketed, and some letters,
+over which she cast her eye; and by Fitz's return they had the room as
+neat as possible, and the best glass and dessert-service mustered on the
+study table.
+
+It was a very neat and handsome service, as you may be sure Mrs.
+Gashleigh thought, whose rich uncle had purchased it for the young
+couple, at Spode and Copeland's; but it was only for twelve persons.
+
+It was agreed that it would be, in all respects, cheaper and better to
+purchase a dozen more dessert-plates; and with “my silver basket in
+the centre,” Mrs. G. said (she is always bragging about that confounded
+bread-basket), “we need not have any extra china dishes, and the table
+will look very pretty.”
+
+On making a roll-call of the glass, it was calculated that at least a
+dozen or so tumblers, four or five dozen wines, eight water-bottles, and
+a proper quantity of ice-plates, were requisite; and that, as they would
+always be useful, it would be best to purchase the articles immediately.
+Fitz tumbled over the basket containing them, which stood in the hall as
+he came in from chambers, and over the boy who had brought them--and the
+little bill.
+
+The women had had a long debate, and something like a quarrel, it must
+be owned, over the bill of fare. Mrs. Gashleigh, who had lived a great
+part of her life in Devonshire, and kept house in great state there,
+was famous for making some dishes, without which, she thought, no dinner
+could be perfect. When she proposed her mock-turtle, and stewed pigeons,
+and gooseberry-cream, Rosa turned up her nose--a pretty little nose it
+was, by the way, and with a natural turn in that direction.
+
+“Mock-turtle in June, mamma!” said she.
+
+“It was good enough for your grandfather, Rosa,” the mamma replied: “it
+was good enough for the Lord High Admiral, when he was at Plymouth; it
+was good enough for the first men in the county, and relished by Lord
+Fortyskewer and Lord Rolls; Sir Lawrence Porker ate twice of it after
+Exeter races; and I think it might be good enough for--”
+
+“I will NOT have it, mamma!” said Rosa, with a stamp of her foot; and
+Mrs. Gashleigh knew what resolution there was in that. Once, when she
+had tried to physic the baby, there had been a similar fight between
+them.
+
+So Mrs. Gashleigh made out a carte, in which the soup was left with
+a dash--a melancholy vacuum; and in which the pigeons were certainly
+thrust in among the entrees; but Rosa determined they never should make
+an entree at all into HER dinner-party, but that she would have the
+dinner her own way.
+
+When Fitz returned, then, and after he had paid the little bill of 6L.
+14s. 6d. for the glass, Rosa flew to him with her sweetest smiles, and
+the baby in her arms. And after she had made him remark how the child
+grew every day more and more like him, and after she had treated him to
+a number of compliments and caresses, which it were positively fulsome
+to exhibit in public, and after she had soothed him into good humor
+by her artless tenderness, she began to speak to him about some little
+points which she had at heart.
+
+She pointed out with a sigh how shabby the old curtains looked since the
+dear new glasses which her darling Fitz had given her had been put up in
+the drawing-room. Muslin curtains cost nothing, and she must and would
+have them.
+
+The muslin curtains were accorded. She and Fitz went and bought them
+at Shoolbred's, when you may be sure she treated herself likewise to
+a neat, sweet pretty half-mourning (for the Court, you know, is in
+mourning)--a neat sweet barege, or calimanco, or bombazine, or tiffany,
+or some such thing; but Madame Camille, of Regent Street, made it up,
+and Rosa looked like an angel in it on the night of her little dinner.
+
+“And, my sweet,” she continued, after the curtains had been accorded,
+“mamma and I have been talking about the dinner. She wants to make
+it very expensive, which I cannot allow. I have been thinking of a
+delightful and economical plan, and you, my sweetest Fitz, must put it
+into execution.”
+
+“I have cooked a mutton-chop when I was in chambers,” Fitz said with a
+laugh. “Am I to put on a cap and an apron?”
+
+“No: but you are to go to the 'Megatherium Club' (where, you wretch,
+you are always going without my leave), and you are to beg Monsieur
+Mirobolant, your famous cook, to send you one of his best aides-de-camp,
+as I know he will, and with his aid we can dress the dinner and
+the confectionery at home for ALMOST NOTHING, and we can show those
+purse-proud Topham Sawyers and Rowdys that the HUMBLE COTTAGE can
+furnish forth an elegant entertainment as well as the gilded halls of
+wealth.”
+
+Fitz agreed to speak to Monsieur Mirobolant. If Rosa had had a fancy
+for the cook of the Prime Minister, I believe the deluded creature of a
+husband would have asked Lord John for the loan of him.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+Fitzroy Timmins, whose taste for wine is remarkable for so young a man,
+is a member of the committee of the “Megatherium Club,” and the great
+Mirobolant, good-natured as all great men are, was only too happy to
+oblige him. A young friend and protege of his, of considerable merit,
+M. Cavalcadour, happened to be disengaged through the lamented death
+of Lord Hauncher, with whom young Cavalcadour had made his debut as an
+artist. He had nothing to refuse to his master, Mirobolant, and would
+impress himself to be useful to a gourmet so distinguished as Monsieur
+Timmins. Fitz went away as pleased as Punch with this encomium of the
+great Mirobolant, and was one of those who voted against the decreasing
+of Mirobolant's salary, when the measure was proposed by Mr. Parings,
+Colonel Close, and the Screw party in the committee of the club.
+
+Faithful to the promise of his great master, the youthful Cavalcadour
+called in Lilliput Street the next day. A rich crimson velvet waistcoat,
+with buttons of blue glass and gold, a variegated blue satin stock, over
+which a graceful mosaic chain hung in glittering folds, a white hat
+worn on one side of his long curling ringlets, redolent with the most
+delightful hair-oil--one of those white hats which looks as if it had
+been just skinned--and a pair of gloves not exactly of the color of
+beurre frais, but of beurre that has been up the chimney, with a natty
+cane with a gilt knob, completed the upper part at any rate, of the
+costume of the young fellow whom the page introduced to Mrs. Timmins.
+
+Her mamma and she had been just having a dispute about the
+gooseberry-cream when Cavalcadour arrived. His presence silenced Mrs.
+Gashleigh; and Rosa, in carrying on a conversation with him in the
+French language--which she had acquired perfectly in an elegant
+finishing establishment in Kensington Square--had a great advantage
+over her mother, who could only pursue the dialogue with very much
+difficulty, eying one or other interlocutor with an alarmed and
+suspicious look, and gasping out “We” whenever she thought a proper
+opportunity arose for the use of that affirmative.
+
+“I have two leetl menus weez me,” said Cavalcadour to Mrs. Gashleigh.
+
+“Minews--yes,--oh, indeed?” answered the lady.
+
+“Two little cartes.”
+
+“Oh, two carts! Oh, we,” she said. “Coming, I suppose?” And she looked
+out of the window to see if they were there.
+
+Cavalcadour smiled. He produced from a pocket-book a pink paper and
+a blue paper, on which he had written two bills of fare--the last two
+which he had composed for the lamented Hauncher--and he handed these
+over to Mrs. Fitzroy.
+
+The poor little woman was dreadfully puzzled with these documents, (she
+has them in her possession still,) and began to read from the pink one
+as follows:--
+
+                        “DINER POUR 16 PERSONNES.
+
+                       Potage (clair) a la Rigodon.
+                       Do. a la Prince de Tombuctou.
+
+                              Deux Poissons.
+
+            Saumon de Severne                 Rougets Gratines
+             a la Boadicee.                    a la Cleopatre.
+
+                               Deux Releves.
+
+              Le Chapeau-a-trois-cornes farci a la Robespierre.
+                        Le Tire-botte a l'Odalisque.
+
+                               Six Entrees.
+                   Saute de Hannetons a l'Epingliere.
+                     Cotelettes a la Megatherium.
+                  Bourrasque de Veau a la Palsambleu.
+            Laitances de Carpe en goguette a la Reine Pomare.
+            Turban de Volaille a l'Archeveque de Cantorbery.”
+
+And so on with the entremets, and hors d'oeuvres, and the rotis, and the
+releves.
+
+“Madame will see that the dinners are quite simple,” said M.
+Cavalcadour.
+
+“Oh, quite!” said Rosa, dreadfully puzzled.
+
+“Which would Madame like?”
+
+“Which would we like, mamma?” Rosa asked; adding, as if after a little
+thought, “I think, sir, we should prefer the blue one.” At which Mrs.
+Gashleigh nodded as knowingly as she could; though pink or blue, I defy
+anybody to know what these cooks mean by their jargon.
+
+“If you please, Madame, we will go down below and examine the scene of
+operations,” Monsieur Cavalcadour said; and so he was marshalled down
+the stairs to the kitchen, which he didn't like to name, and appeared
+before the cook in all his splendor.
+
+He cast a rapid glance round the premises, and a smile of something like
+contempt lighted up his features. “Will you bring pen and ink, if
+you please, and I will write down a few of the articles which will be
+necessary for us? We shall require, if you please, eight more stew-pans,
+a couple of braising-pans, eight saute-pans, six bainmarie-pans, a
+freezing-pot with accessories, and a few more articles of which I will
+inscribe the names.” And Mr. Cavalcadour did so, dashing down, with the
+rapidity of genius, a tremendous list of ironmongery goods, which he
+handed over to Mrs. Timmins. She and her mamma were quite frightened by
+the awful catalogue.
+
+“I will call three days hence and superintend the progress of matters;
+and we will make the stock for the soup the day before the dinner.”
+
+“Don't you think, sir,” here interposed Mrs. Gashleigh, “that one
+soup--a fine rich mock-turtle, such as I have seen in the best houses in
+the West of England, and such as the late Lord Fortyskewer--”
+
+“You will get what is wanted for the soups, if you please,” Mr.
+Cavalcadour continued, not heeding this interruption, and as bold as a
+captain on his own quarter-deck: “for the stock of clear soup, you will
+get a leg of beef, a leg of veal, and a ham.”
+
+“We, munseer,” said the cook, dropping a terrified curtsy: “a leg of
+beef, a leg of veal, and a ham.”
+
+“You can't serve a leg of veal at a party,” said Mrs. Gashleigh; “and a
+leg of beef is not a company dish.”
+
+“Madame, they are to make the stock of the clear soup,” Mr. Cavalcadour
+said.
+
+“WHAT!” cried Mrs. Gashleigh; and the cook repeated his former
+expression.
+
+“Never, whilst I am in this house,” cried out Mrs. Gashleigh,
+indignantly; “never in a Christian ENGLISH household; never shall such
+sinful waste be permitted by ME. If you wish me to dine, Rosa, you must
+get a dinner less EXPENSIVE. The Right Honorable Lord Fortyskewer could
+dine, sir, without these wicked luxuries, and I presume my daughter's
+guests can.”
+
+“Madame is perfectly at liberty to decide,” said M. Cavalcadour. “I came
+to oblige Madame and my good friend Mirobolant, not myself.”
+
+“Thank you, sir, I think it WILL be too expensive,” Rosa stammered in a
+great flutter; “but I am very much obliged to you.”
+
+“Il n'y a point d'obligation, Madame,” said Monsieur Alcide Camille
+Cavalcadour in his most superb manner; and, making a splendid bow to the
+lady of the house, was respectfully conducted to the upper regions by
+little Buttons, leaving Rosa frightened, the cook amazed and silent, and
+Mrs. Gashleigh boiling with indignation against the dresser.
+
+Up to that moment, Mrs. Blowser, the cook, who had come out of
+Devonshire with Mrs. Gashleigh (of course that lady garrisoned
+her daughter's house with servants, and expected them to give her
+information of everything which took place there) up to that moment, I
+say, the cook had been quite contented with that subterraneous station
+which she occupied in life, and had a pride in keeping her kitchen neat,
+bright, and clean. It was, in her opinion, the comfortablest room in the
+house (we all thought so when we came down of a night to smoke there),
+and the handsomest kitchen in Lilliput Street.
+
+But after the visit of Cavalcadour, the cook became quite discontented
+and uneasy in her mind. She talked in a melancholy manner over the
+area-railings to the cooks at twenty-three and twenty-five. She stepped
+over the way, and conferred with the cook there. She made inquiries at
+the baker's and at other places about the kitchens in the great
+houses in Brobdingnag Gardens, and how many spits, bangmarry-pans, and
+stoo-pans they had. She thought she could not do with an occasional
+help, but must have a kitchen-maid. And she was often discovered by
+a gentleman of the police force, who was, I believe, her cousin, and
+occasionally visited her when Mrs. Gashleigh was not in the house or
+spying it:--she was discovered seated with MRS. RUNDELL in her lap,
+its leaves bespattered with her tears. “My pease be gone, Pelisse,”
+ she said, “zins I zaw that ther Franchman!” And it was all the faithful
+fellow could do to console her.
+
+“---- the dinner!” said Timmins, in a rage at last. “Having it cooked
+in the house is out of the question. The bother of it, and the row your
+mother makes, are enough to drive one mad. It won't happen again, I
+can promise you, Rosa. Order it at Fubsby's, at once. You can have
+everything from Fubsby's--from footmen to saltspoons. Let's go and order
+it at Fubsby's.”
+
+“Darling, if you don't mind the expense, and it will be any relief to
+you, let us do as you wish,” Rosa said; and she put on her bonnet, and
+they went off to the grand cook and confectioner of the Brobdingnag
+quarter.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+On the arm of her Fitzroy, Rosa went off to Fubsby's, that magnificent
+shop at the corner of Parliament Place and Alicompayne Square,--a
+shop into which the rogue had often cast a glance of approbation as he
+passed: for there are not only the most wonderful and delicious cakes
+and confections in the window, but at the counter there are almost sure
+to be three or four of the prettiest women in the whole of this world,
+with little darling caps of the last French make, with beautiful wavy
+hair, and the neatest possible waists and aprons.
+
+Yes, there they sit; and others, perhaps, besides Fitz have cast a
+sheep's-eye through those enormous plate-glass windowpanes. I suppose it
+is the fact of perpetually living among such a quantity of good things
+that makes those young ladies so beautiful. They come into the place,
+let us say, like ordinary people, and gradually grow handsomer and
+handsomer, until they grow out into the perfect angels you see. It can't
+be otherwise: if you and I, my dear fellow, were to have a course of
+that place, we should become beautiful too. They live in an atmosphere
+of the most delicious pine-apples, blanc-manges, creams, (some whipt,
+and some so good that of course they don't want whipping,) jellies,
+tipsy-cakes, cherry-brandy--one hundred thousand sweet and lovely
+things. Look at the preserved fruits, look at the golden ginger, the
+outspreading ananas, the darling little rogues of China oranges, ranged
+in the gleaming crystal cylinders. Mon Dieu! Look at the strawberries
+in the leaves. Each of them is as large nearly as a lady's reticule, and
+looks as if it had been brought up in a nursery to itself. One of those
+strawberries is a meal for those young ladies, behind the counter; they
+nibble off a little from the side, and if they are very hungry,
+which can scarcely ever happen, they are allowed to go to the crystal
+canisters and take out a rout-cake or macaroon. In the evening they sit
+and tell each other little riddles out of the bonbons; and when they
+wish to amuse themselves, they read the most delightful remarks, in the
+French language, about Love, and Cupid, and Beauty, before they place
+them inside the crackers. They always are writing down good things into
+Mr. Fubsby's ledgers. It must be a perfect feast to read them. Talk of
+the Garden of Eden! I believe it was nothing to Mr. Fubsby's house; and
+I have no doubt that after those young ladies have been there a certain
+time, they get to such a pitch of loveliness at last, that they become
+complete angels, with wings sprouting out of their lovely shoulders,
+when (after giving just a preparatory balance or two) they fly up to the
+counter and perch there for a minute, hop down again, and affectionately
+kiss the other young ladies, and say, “Good-by, dears! We shall meet
+again la haut.” And then with a whir of their deliciously scented wings,
+away they fly for good, whisking over the trees of Brobdingnag Square,
+and up into the sky, as the policeman touches his hat.
+
+It is up there that they invent the legends for the crackers, and the
+wonderful riddles and remarks on the bonbons. No mortal, I am sure,
+could write them.
+
+I never saw a man in such a state as Fitzroy Timmins in the presence of
+those ravishing houris. Mrs. Fitz having explained that they required a
+dinner for twenty persons, the chief young lady asked what Mr. and
+Mrs. Fitz would like, and named a thousand things, each better than the
+other, to all of which Fitz instantly said yes. The wretch was in such
+a state of infatuation that I believe if that lady had proposed to him a
+fricasseed elephant, or a boa-constrictor in jelly, he would have said,
+“O yes, certainly; put it down.”
+
+That Peri wrote down in her album a list of things which it would make
+your mouth water to listen to. But she took it all quite calmly. Heaven
+bless you! THEY don't care about things that are no delicacies to them!
+But whatever she chose to write down, Fitzroy let her.
+
+After the dinner and dessert were ordered (at Fubsby's they furnish
+everything: dinner and dessert, plate and china, servants in your own
+livery, and, if you please, guests of title too), the married couple
+retreated from that shop of wonders; Rosa delighted that the trouble of
+the dinner was all off their hands but she was afraid it would be rather
+expensive.
+
+“Nothing can be too expensive which pleases YOU, dear,” Fitz said.
+
+“By the way, one of those young women was rather good-looking,” Rosa
+remarked: “the one in the cap with the blue ribbons.” (And she cast
+about the shape of the cap in her mind, and determined to have exactly
+such another.)
+
+“Think so? I didn't observe,” said the miserable hypocrite by her side;
+and when he had seen Rosa home, he went back, like an infamous fiend, to
+order something else which he had forgotten, he said, at Fubsby's. Get
+out of that Paradise, you cowardly, creeping, vile serpent you!
+
+Until the day of the dinner, the infatuated fop was ALWAYS going
+to Fubsby's. HE WAS REMARKED THERE. He used to go before he went to
+chambers in the morning, and sometimes on his return from the Temple:
+but the morning was the time which he preferred; and one day, when he
+went on one of his eternal pretexts, and was chattering and flirting at
+the counter, a lady who had been reading yesterday's paper and eating
+a halfpenny bun for an hour in the back shop (if that paradise may be
+called a shop)--a lady stepped forward, laid down the Morning Herald,
+and confronted him.
+
+That lady was Mrs. Gashleigh. From that day the miserable Fitzroy was in
+her power; and she resumed a sway over his house, to shake off which had
+been the object of his life, and the result of many battles. And for a
+mere freak--(for, on going into Fubsby's a week afterwards he found the
+Peris drinking tea out of blue cups, and eating stale bread and butter,
+when his absurd passion instantly vanished)--I say, for a mere freak,
+the most intolerable burden of his life was put on his shoulders
+again--his mother-in-law.
+
+On the day before the little dinner took place--and I promise you
+we shall come to it in the very next chapter--a tall and elegant
+middle-aged gentleman, who might have passed for an earl but that there
+was a slight incompleteness about his hands and feet, the former being
+uncommonly red, and the latter large and irregular, was introduced to
+Mrs. Timmins by the page, who announced him as Mr. Truncheon.
+
+“I'm Truncheon, Ma'am,” he said, with a low bow.
+
+“Indeed!” said Rosa.
+
+“About the dinner M'm, from Fubsby's, M'm. As you have no butler, M'm,
+I presume you will wish me to act as sich. I shall bring two persons
+as haids to-morrow; both answers to the name of John. I'd best, if you
+please, inspect the premisis, and will think you to allow your young man
+to show me the pantry and kitching.”
+
+Truncheon spoke in a low voice, and with the deepest and most respectful
+melancholy. There is not much expression in his eyes, but from what
+there is, you would fancy that he was oppressed by a secret sorrow. Rosa
+trembled as she surveyed this gentleman's size, his splendid appearance,
+and gravity. “I am sure,” she said, “I never shall dare to ask him
+to hand a glass of water.” Even Mrs. Gashleigh, when she came on the
+morning of the actual dinner-party, to superintend matters, was cowed,
+and retreated from the kitchen before the calm majesty of Truncheon.
+
+And yet that great man was, like all the truly great--affable.
+
+He put aside his coat and waistcoat (both of evening cut, and looking
+prematurely splendid as he walked the streets in noonday), and did not
+disdain to rub the glasses and polish the decanters, and to show young
+Buttons the proper mode of preparing these articles for a dinner. And
+while he operated, the maids, and Buttons, and cook, when she could--and
+what had she but the vegetables to boil?--crowded round him, and
+listened with wonder as he talked of the great families as he had lived
+with. That man, as they saw him there before them, had been cab-boy
+to Lord Tantallan, valet to the Earl of Bareacres, and groom of the
+chambers to the Duchess Dowager of Fitzbattleaxe. Oh, it was delightful
+to hear Mr. Truncheon!
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+On the great, momentous, stupendous day of the dinner, my beloved female
+reader may imagine that Fitzroy Timmins was sent about his business at
+an early hour in the morning, while the women began to make preparations
+to receive their guests. “There will be no need of your going to
+Fubsby's,” Mrs. Gashleigh said to him, with a look that drove him out
+of doors. “Everything that we require has been ordered THERE! You will
+please to be back here at six o'clock, and not sooner: and I presume you
+will acquiesce in my arrangements about the WINE?”
+
+“O yes, mamma,” said the prostrate son-in-law.
+
+“In so large a party--a party beyond some folks MEANS--expensive WINES
+are ABSURD. The light sherry at 26s., the champagne at 42s.; and you are
+not to go beyond 36s. for the claret and port after dinner. Mind, coffee
+will be served; and you come up stairs after two rounds of the claret.”
+
+“Of course, of course,” acquiesced the wretch; and hurried out of the
+house to his chambers, and to discharge the commissions with which the
+womankind had intrusted him.
+
+As for Mrs. Gashleigh, you might have heard her bawling over the house
+the whole day long. That admirable woman was everywhere: in the kitchen
+until the arrival of Truncheon, before whom she would not retreat
+without a battle; on the stairs; in Fitzroy's dressing-room; and in
+Fitzroy minor's nursery, to whom she gave a dose of her own composition,
+while the nurse was sent out on a pretext to make purchases of garnish
+for the dishes to be served for the little dinner. Garnish for the
+dishes! As if the folks at Fubsby's could not garnish dishes better than
+Gashleigh, with her stupid old-world devices of laurel-leaves, parsley,
+and cut turnips! Why, there was not a dish served that day that was not
+covered over with skewers, on which truffles, crayfish, mushrooms,
+and forced-meat were impaled. When old Gashleigh went down with her
+barbarian bunches of holly and greens to stick about the meats, even the
+cook saw their incongruity, and, at Truncheon's orders, flung the whole
+shrubbery into the dust-house, where, while poking about the premises,
+you may be sure Mrs. G. saw it.
+
+Every candle which was to be burned that night (including the tallow
+candle, which she said was a good enough bed-light for Fitzroy)
+she stuck into the candlesticks with her own hands, giving her own
+high-shouldered plated candlesticks of the year 1798 the place of honor.
+She upset all poor Rosa's floral arrangements, turning the nosegays
+from one vase into the other without any pity, and was never tired of
+beating, and pushing, and patting, and WHAPPING the curtain and sofa
+draperies into shape in the little drawing-room.
+
+In Fitz's own apartments she revelled with peculiar pleasure. It has
+been described how she had sacked his study and pushed away his papers,
+some of which, including three cigars, and the commencement of an
+article for the Law Magazine, “Lives of the Sheriffs' Officers,” he has
+never been able to find to this day. Mamma now went into the little room
+in the back regions, which is Fitz's dressing-room, (and was destined to
+be a cloak-room,) and here she rummaged to her heart's delight.
+
+In an incredibly short space of time she examined all his outlying
+pockets, drawers, and letters; she inspected his socks and
+handkerchiefs in the top drawers; and on the dressing-table, his
+razors, shaving-strop, and hair-oil. She carried off his silver-topped
+scent-bottle out of his dressing-case, and a half-dozen of his favorite
+pills (which Fitz possesses in common with every well-regulated man),
+and probably administered them to her own family. His boots, glossy
+pumps, and slippers she pushed into the shower-bath, where the poor
+fellow stepped into them the next morning, in the midst of a pool in
+which they were lying. The baby was found sucking his boot-hooks the
+next day in the nursery; and as for the bottle of varnish for his shoes,
+(which he generally paints upon the trees himself, having a pretty taste
+in that way,) it could never be found to the present hour but it was
+remarked that the young Master Gashleighs, when they came home for the
+holidays, always wore lacquered highlows; and the reader may draw his
+conclusions from THAT fact.
+
+In the course of the day all the servants gave Mrs. Timmins warning.
+
+The cook said she coodn't abear it no longer, 'aving Mrs. G. always
+about her kitching, with her fingers in all the saucepans. Mrs. G. had
+got her the place, but she preferred one as Mrs. G. didn't get for her.
+
+The nurse said she was come to nuss Master Fitzroy, and knew her duty;
+his grandmamma wasn't his nuss, and was always aggrawating her,--missus
+must shoot herself elsewhere.
+
+The housemaid gave utterance to the same sentiments in language more
+violent.
+
+Little Buttons bounced up to his mistress, said he was butler of the
+family, Mrs. G. was always poking about his pantry, and dam if he'd
+stand it.
+
+At every moment Rosa grew more and more bewildered. The baby howled a
+great deal during the day. His large china christening-bowl was cracked
+by Mrs. Gashleigh altering the flowers in it, and pretending to be very
+cool, whilst her hands shook with rage.
+
+“Pray go on, mamma,” Rosa said with tears in her eyes. “Should you like
+to break the chandelier?”
+
+“Ungrateful, unnatural child!” bellowed the other. “Only that I know you
+couldn't do without me, I'd leave the house this minute.”
+
+“As you wish,” said Rosa; but Mrs. G. DIDN'T wish: and in this juncture
+Truncheon arrived.
+
+That officer surveyed the dining-room, laid the cloth there with
+admirable precision and neatness; ranged the plate on the sideboard with
+graceful accuracy, but objected to that old thing in the centre, as he
+called Mrs. Gashleigh's silver basket, as cumbrous and useless for the
+table, where they would want all the room they could get.
+
+Order was not restored to the house, nor, indeed, any decent progress
+made, until this great man came: but where there was a revolt before,
+and a general disposition to strike work and to yell out defiance
+against Mrs. Gashleigh, who was sitting bewildered and furious in the
+drawing-room--where there was before commotion, at the appearance of the
+master-spirit, all was peace and unanimity: the cook went back to her
+pans, the housemaid busied herself with the china and glass, cleaning
+some articles and breaking others, Buttons sprang up and down the
+stairs, obedient to the orders of his chief, and all things went well
+and in their season.
+
+At six, the man with the wine came from Binney and Latham's. At a
+quarter past six, Timmins himself arrived.
+
+At half past six he might have been heard shouting out for his varnished
+boots but we know where THOSE had been hidden--and for his dressing
+things; but Mrs. Gashleigh had put them away.
+
+As in his vain inquiries for these articles he stood shouting, “Nurse!
+Buttons! Rosa my dear!” and the most fearful execrations up and down the
+stairs, Mr. Truncheon came out on him.
+
+“Egscuse me, sir,” says he, “but it's impawsable. We can't dine twenty
+at that table--not if you set 'em out awinder, we can't.”
+
+“What's to be done?” asked Fitzroy, in an agony; “they've all said
+they'd come.”
+
+“Can't do it,” said the other; “with two top and bottom--and your table
+is as narrow as a bench--we can't hold more than heighteen, and then
+each person's helbows will be into his neighbor's cheer.”
+
+“Rosa! Mrs. Gashleigh!” cried out Timmins, “come down and speak to this
+gentl--this--”
+
+“Truncheon, sir,” said the man.
+
+The women descended from the drawing-room. “Look and see, ladies,” he
+said, inducting them into the dining-room: “there's the room, there's
+the table laid for heighteen, and I defy you to squeege in more.”
+
+“One person in a party always fails,” said Mrs. Gashleigh, getting
+alarmed.
+
+“That's nineteen,” Mr. Truncheon remarked. “We must knock another hoff,
+Ma'm.” And he looked her hard in the face.
+
+Mrs. Gashleigh was very red and nervous, and paced, or rather squeezed
+round the table (it was as much as she could do). The chairs could not
+be put any closer than they were. It was impossible, unless the convive
+sat as a centre-piece in the middle, to put another guest at that table.
+
+“Look at that lady movin' round, sir. You see now the difficklty. If
+my men wasn't thinner, they couldn't hoperate at all,” Mr. Truncheon
+observed, who seemed to have a spite to Mrs. Gashleigh.
+
+“What is to be done?” she said, with purple accents.
+
+“My dearest mamma,” Rosa cried out, “you must stop at home--how sorry I
+am!” And she shot one glance at Fitzroy, who shot another at the great
+Truncheon, who held down his eyes. “We could manage with heighteen,” he
+said, mildly.
+
+Mrs. Gashleigh gave a hideous laugh.
+
+*****
+
+She went away. At eight o'clock she was pacing at the corner of the
+street, and actually saw the company arrive. First came the Topham
+Sawyers, in their light-blue carriage with the white hammercloth and
+blue and white ribbons--their footmen drove the house down with the
+knocking.
+
+Then followed the ponderous and snuff-colored vehicle, with faded gilt
+wheels and brass earl's coronets all over it, the conveyance of the
+House of Bungay. The Countess of Bungay and daughter stepped out of the
+carriage. The fourteenth Earl of Bungay couldn't come.
+
+Sir Thomas and Lady Gulpin's fly made its appearance, from which issued
+the General with his star, and Lady Gulpin in yellow satin. The Rowdys'
+brougham followed next; after which Mrs. Butt's handsome equipage drove
+up.
+
+The two friends of the house, young gentlemen from the Temple, now
+arrived in cab No. 9996. We tossed up, in fact, which should pay the
+fare.
+
+Mr. Ranville Ranville walked, and was dusting his boots as the Templars
+drove up. Lord Castlemouldy came out of a twopenny omnibus. Funnyman,
+the wag, came last, whirling up rapidly in a hansom, just as Mrs.
+Gashleigh, with rage in her heart, was counting that two people had
+failed, and that there were only seventeen after all.
+
+Mr. Truncheon passed our names to Mr. Billiter, who bawled them out on
+the stairs. Rosa was smiling in a pink dress, and looking as fresh as
+an angel, and received her company with that grace which has always
+characterized her.
+
+The moment of the dinner arrived, old Lady Bungay scuffled off on
+the arm of Fitzroy, while the rear was brought up by Rosa and Lord
+Castlemouldy, of Ballyshanvanvoght Castle, co, Tipperary. Some fellows
+who had the luck took down ladies to dinner. I was not sorry to be out
+of the way of Mrs. Rowdy, with her dandified airs, or of that high and
+mighty county princess, Mrs. Topham Sawyer.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+Of course it does not become the present writer, who has partaken of the
+best entertainment which his friends could supply, to make fun of their
+(somewhat ostentatious, as it must be confessed) hospitality. If they
+gave a dinner beyond their means, it is no business of mine. I hate a
+man who goes and eats a friend's meat, and then blabs the secrets of
+the mahogany. Such a man deserves never to be asked to dinner again; and
+though at the close of a London season that seems no great loss, and
+you sicken of a whitebait as you would of a whale--yet we must always
+remember that there's another season coming, and hold our tongues for
+the present.
+
+As for describing, then, the mere victuals on Timmins's table, that
+would be absurd. Everybody--(I mean of the genteel world of course, of
+which I make no doubt the reader is a polite ornament)--Everybody has
+the same everything in London. You see the same coats, the same dinners,
+the same boiled fowls and mutton, the same cutlets, fish, and
+cucumbers, the same lumps of Wenham Lake ice, &c. The waiters with white
+neck-cloths are as like each other everywhere as the peas which they
+hand round with the ducks of the second course. Can't any one invent
+anything new?
+
+The only difference between Timmins's dinner and his neighbor's was,
+that he had hired, as we have said, the greater part of the plate, and
+that his cowardly conscience magnified faults and disasters of which no
+one else probably took heed.
+
+But Rosa thought, from the supercilious air with which Mrs. Topham
+Sawyer was eying the plate and other arrangements, that she was
+remarking the difference of the ciphers on the forks and spoons--which
+had, in fact, been borrowed from every one of Fitzroy's friends--(I
+know, for instance, that he had my six, among others, and only returned
+five, along with a battered old black-pronged plated abomination, which
+I have no doubt belongs to Mrs. Gashleigh, whom I hereby request to send
+back mine in exchange)--their guilty consciences, I say, made them fancy
+that every one was spying out their domestic deficiencies: whereas, it
+is probable that nobody present thought of their failings at all. People
+never do: they never see holes in their neighbors' coats--they are too
+indolent, simple, and charitable.
+
+Some things, however, one could not help remarking: for instance, though
+Fitz is my closest friend, yet could I avoid seeing and being amused by
+his perplexity and his dismal efforts to be facetious? His eye wandered
+all round the little room with quick uneasy glances, very different from
+those frank and jovial looks with which he is accustomed to welcome you
+to a leg of mutton; and Rosa, from the other end of the table, and
+over the flowers, entree dishes, and wine-coolers, telegraphed him with
+signals of corresponding alarm. Poor devils! why did they ever go beyond
+that leg of mutton?
+
+Funnyman was not brilliant in conversation, scarcely opening his mouth,
+except for the purposes of feasting. The fact is, our friend Tom Dawson
+was at table, who knew all his stories, and in his presence the greatest
+wag is always silent and uneasy.
+
+Fitz has a very pretty wit of his own, and a good reputation on circuit;
+but he is timid before great people. And indeed the presence of that
+awful Lady Bungay on his right hand was enough to damp him. She was in
+court mourning (for the late Prince of Schlippenschloppen). She had on a
+large black funereal turban and appurtenances, and a vast breastplate of
+twinkling, twiddling black bugles. No wonder a man could not be gay in
+talking to HER.
+
+Mrs. Rowdy and Mrs. Topham Sawyer love each other as women do who have
+the same receiving nights, and ask the same society; they were only
+separated by Ranville Ranville, who tries to be well with both and they
+talked at each other across him.
+
+Topham and Rowdy growled out a conversation about Rum, Ireland, and the
+Navigation Laws, quite unfit for print. Sawyer never speaks three words
+without mentioning the House and the Speaker.
+
+The Irish Peer said nothing (which was a comfort) but he ate and drank
+of everything which came in his way; and cut his usual absurd figure in
+dyed whiskers and a yellow under-waistcoat.
+
+General Gulpin sported his star, and looked fat and florid, but
+melancholy. His wife ordered away his dinner, just like honest Sancho's
+physician at Barataria.
+
+Botherby's stories about Lamartine are as old as the hills, since the
+barricades of 1848; and he could not get in a word or cut the slightest
+figure. And as for Tom Dawson, he was carrying on an undertoned
+small-talk with Lady Barbara St. Mary's, so that there was not much
+conversation worth record going on WITHIN the dining-room.
+
+Outside it was different. Those houses in Lilliput Street are so
+uncommonly compact, that you can hear everything which takes place all
+over the tenement; and so--
+
+In the awful pauses of the banquet, and the hall-door being furthermore
+open, we had the benefit of hearing:
+
+The cook, and the occasional cook, below stairs, exchanging rapid
+phrases regarding the dinner;
+
+The smash of the soup-tureen, and swift descent of the kitchen-maid and
+soup-ladle down the stairs to the lower regions. This accident created a
+laugh, and rather amused Fitzroy and the company, and caused Funnyman
+to say, bowing to Rosa, that she was mistress of herself, though
+China fall. But she did not heed him, for at that moment another noise
+commenced, namely, that of--
+
+The baby in the upper rooms, who commenced a series of piercing yells,
+which, though stopped by the sudden clapping to of the nursery-door,
+were only more dreadful to the mother when suppressed. She would
+have given a guinea to go up stairs and have done with the whole
+entertainment.
+
+A thundering knock came at the door very early after the dessert, and
+the poor soul took a speedy opportunity of summoning the ladies to
+depart, though you may be sure it was only old Mrs. Gashleigh, who had
+come with her daughters--of course the first person to come. I saw her
+red gown whisking up the stairs, which were covered with plates and
+dishes, over which she trampled.
+
+Instead of having any quiet after the retreat of the ladies, the house
+was kept in a rattle, and the glasses jingled on the table as the flymen
+and coachmen plied the knocker, and the soiree came in. From my place
+I could see everything: the guests as they arrived (I remarked very few
+carriages, mostly cabs and flies), and a little crowd of blackguard boys
+and children, who were formed round the door, and gave ironical cheers
+to the folks as they stepped out of their vehicles.
+
+As for the evening-party, if a crowd in the dog-days is pleasant, poor
+Mrs. Timmins certainly had a successful soiree. You could hardly move
+on the stair. Mrs. Sternhold broke in the banisters, and nearly fell
+through. There was such a noise and chatter you could not hear the
+singing of the Miss Gashleighs, which was no great loss. Lady Bungay
+could hardly get to her carriage, being entangled with Colonel Wedgewood
+in the passage. An absurd attempt was made to get up a dance of some
+kind; but before Mrs. Crowder had got round the room, the hanging-lamp
+in the dining-room below was stove in, and fell with a crash on the
+table, now prepared for refreshment.
+
+Why, in fact, did the Timminses give that party at all? It was quite
+beyond their means. They have offended a score of their old friends,
+and pleased none of their acquaintances. So angry were many who were not
+asked, that poor Rosa says she must now give a couple more parties
+and take in those not previously invited. And I know for a fact
+that Fubsby's bill is not yet paid; nor Binney and Latham's the
+wine-merchants; that the breakage and hire of glass and china cost ever
+so much money; that every true friend of Timmins has cried out against
+his absurd extravagance, and that now, when every one is going out of
+town, Fitz has hardly money to pay his circuit, much more to take Rosa
+to a watering-place, as he wished and promised.
+
+As for Mrs. Gashleigh, the only feasible plan of economy which she
+can suggest, is that she could come and live with her daughter and
+son-in-law, and that they should keep house together. If he agrees to
+this, she has a little sum at the banker's, with which she would not
+mind easing his present difficulties; and the poor wretch is so utterly
+bewildered and crestfallen that it is very likely he will become her
+victim.
+
+The Topham Sawyers, when they go down into the country, will represent
+Fitz as a ruined man and reckless prodigal; his uncle, the attorney,
+from whom he has expectations, will most likely withdraw his business,
+and adopt some other member of his family--Blanche Crowder for instance,
+whose husband, the doctor, has had high words with poor Fitzroy already,
+of course at the women's instigation. And all these accumulated miseries
+fall upon the unfortunate wretch because he was good-natured, and his
+wife would have a Little Dinner.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Little Dinner at Timmins's, by
+William Makepeace Thackeray
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      A Little Dinner at Timmins's., by William Makepeace Thackeray
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
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+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Little Dinner at Timmins's, by
+William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Little Dinner at Timmins's
+
+Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+Release Date: May 27, 2006 [EBook #2859]
+Last Updated: March 5, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S.
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      by William Makepeace Thackeray
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> III. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> IV. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> V. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> VI. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      I.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mr. and Mrs. Fitzroy Timmins live in Lilliput Street, that neat little
+      street which runs at right angles with the Park and Brobdingnag Gardens.
+      It is a very genteel neighborhood, and I need not say they are of a good
+      family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Especially Mrs. Timmins, as her mamma is always telling Mr. T. They are
+      Suffolk people, and distantly related to the Right honorable the Earl of
+      Bungay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides his house in Lilliput Street, Mr. Timmins has chambers in Fig-tree
+      Court, Temple, and goes the Northern Circuit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other day, when there was a slight difference about the payment of
+      fees between the great Parliamentary Counsel and the Solicitors, Stoke and
+      Pogers, of Great George Street, sent the papers of the Lough Foyle and
+      Lough Corrib Junction Railway to Mr. Fitzroy Timmins, who was so elated
+      that he instantly purchased a couple of looking-glasses for his
+      drawing-rooms (the front room is 16 by 12, and the back, a tight but
+      elegant apartment, 10 ft. 6 by 8 ft. 4), a coral for the baby, two new
+      dresses for Mrs. Timmins, and a little rosewood desk, at the Pantechnicon,
+      for which Rosa had long been sighing, with crumpled legs, emerald-green
+      and gold morocco top, and drawers all over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Timmins is a very pretty poetess (her &ldquo;Lines to a Faded Tulip&rdquo; and
+      her &ldquo;Plaint of Plinlimmon&rdquo; appeared in one of last year's Keepsakes); and
+      Fitzroy, as he impressed a kiss on the snowy forehead of his bride,
+      pointed out to her, in one of the innumerable pockets of the desk, an
+      elegant ruby-tipped pen, and six charming little gilt blank books, marked
+      &ldquo;My Books,&rdquo; which Mrs. Fitzroy might fill, he said, (he is an Oxford man,
+      and very polite,) &ldquo;with the delightful productions of her Muse.&rdquo; Besides
+      these books, there was pink paper, paper with crimson edges, lace paper,
+      all stamped with R. F. T. (Rosa Fitzroy Timmins) and the hand and
+      battle-axe, the crest of the Timminses (and borne at Ascalon by Roaldus de
+      Timmins, a crusader, who is now buried in the Temple Church, next to
+      Serjeant Snooks), and yellow, pink, light-blue and other scented sealing
+      waxes, at the service of Rosa when she chose to correspond with her
+      friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosa, you may be sure, jumped with joy at the sight of this sweet present;
+      called her Charles (his first name is Samuel, but they have sunk that) the
+      best of men; embraced him a great number of times, to the edification of
+      her buttony little page, who stood at the landing; and as soon as he was
+      gone to chambers, took the new pen and a sweet sheet of paper, and began
+      to compose a poem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What shall it be about?&rdquo; was naturally her first thought. &ldquo;What should be
+      a young mother's first inspiration?&rdquo; Her child lay on the sofa asleep
+      before her; and she began in her neatest hand&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                               &ldquo;LINES
+
+     &ldquo;ON MY SON BUNGAY DE BRACY GASHLEIGH TYMMYNS, AGED TEN MONTHS.
+
+                                                        &ldquo;Tuesday.
+
+          &ldquo;How beautiful! how beautiful thou seemest,
+             My boy, my precious one, my rosy babe!
+           Kind angels hover round thee, as thou dreamest:
+           Soft lashes hide thy beauteous azure eye which gleamest.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gleamest? thine eye which gleamest? Is that grammar?&rdquo; thought Rosa, who
+      had puzzled her little brains for some time with this absurd question,
+      when the baby woke. Then the cook came up to ask about dinner; then Mrs.
+      Fundy slipped over from No. 27 (they are opposite neighbors, and made an
+      acquaintance through Mrs. Fundy's macaw); and a thousand things happened.
+      Finally, there was no rhyme to babe except Tippoo Saib (against whom Major
+      Gashleigh, Rosa's grandfather, had distinguished himself), and so she gave
+      up the little poem about her De Bracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, when Fitzroy returned from chambers to take a walk with his
+      wife in the Park, as he peeped through the rich tapestry hanging which
+      divided the two drawing-rooms, he found his dear girl still seated at the
+      desk, and writing, writing away with her ruby pen as fast as it could
+      scribble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a genius that child has!&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;why, she is a second Mrs.
+      Norton!&rdquo; and advanced smiling to peep over her shoulder and see what
+      pretty thing Rosa was composing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not poetry, though, that she was writing, and Fitz read as follows:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;LILLIPUT STREET, Tuesday, 22nd May.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. and Mr. Fitzroy Tymmyns request the pleasure of Sir Thomas and Lady
+      Kicklebury's company at dinner on Wednesday, at 7 1/2 o'clock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear!&rdquo; exclaimed the barrister, pulling a long face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Law, Fitzroy!&rdquo; cried the beloved of his bosom, &ldquo;how you do startle one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give a dinner-party with our means!&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ain't you making a fortune, you miser?&rdquo; Rosa said. &ldquo;Fifteen guineas a day
+      is four thousand five hundred a year; I've calculated it.&rdquo; And, so saying,
+      she rose and taking hold of his whiskers (which are as fine as those of
+      any man of his circuit,) she put her mouth close up against his and did
+      something to his long face, which quite changed the expression of it; and
+      which the little page heard outside the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our dining-room won't hold ten,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll only ask twenty, my love. Ten are sure to refuse in this season,
+      when everybody is giving parties. Look, here is the list.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Earl and Countess of Bungay, and Lady Barbara Saint Mary's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are dying to get a lord into the house,&rdquo; Timmins said (HE had not
+      altered his name in Fig-tree Court yet, and therefore I am not so affected
+      as to call him TYMMYNS).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Law, my dear, they are our cousins, and must be asked,&rdquo; Rosa said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us put down my sister and Tom Crowder, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blanche Crowder is really so VERY fat, Fitzroy,&rdquo; his wife said, &ldquo;and our
+      rooms are so VERY small.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fitz laughed. &ldquo;You little rogue,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;Lady Bungay weighs two of
+      Blanche, even when she's not in the f&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fiddlesticks!&rdquo; Rose cried out. &ldquo;Doctor Crowder really cannot be admitted:
+      he makes such a noise eating his soup, that it is really quite
+      disagreeable.&rdquo; And she imitated the gurgling noise performed by the Doctor
+      while inhausting his soup, in such a funny way that Fitz saw inviting him
+      was out of the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides, we mustn't have too many relations,&rdquo; Rosa went on. &ldquo;Mamma, of
+      course, is coming. She doesn't like to be asked in the evening; and she'll
+      bring her silver bread-basket and her candlesticks, which are very rich
+      and handsome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you complain of Blanche for being too stout!&rdquo; groaned out Timmins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well, don't be in a pet,&rdquo; said little Rosa. &ldquo;The girls won't come
+      to dinner; but will bring their music afterwards.&rdquo; And she went on with
+      the list.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir Thomas and Lady Kicklebury, 2. No saying no: we MUST ask them,
+      Charles. They are rich people, and any room in their house in Brobdingnag
+      Gardens would swallow up OUR humble cot. But to people in OUR position in
+      SOCIETY they will be glad enough to come. The city people are glad to mix
+      with the old families.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; says Fitz, with a sad face of assent&mdash;and Mrs. Timmins
+      went on reading her list.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. and Mrs. Topham Sawyer, Belgravine Place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Sawyer hasn't asked you all the season. She gives herself the airs
+      of an empress; and when&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One's Member, you know, my dear, one must have,&rdquo; Rosa replied, with much
+      dignity as if the presence of the representative of her native place would
+      be a protection to her dinner. And a note was written and transported by
+      the page early next morning to the mansion of the Sawyers, in Belgravine
+      Place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Topham Sawyers had just come down to breakfast; Mrs. T. in her large
+      dust-colored morning-dress and Madonna front (she looks rather scraggy of
+      a morning, but I promise you her ringlets and figure will stun you of an
+      evening); and having read the note, the following dialogue passed:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Topham Sawyer.&mdash;&ldquo;Well, upon my word, I don't know where things
+      will end. Mr. Sawyer, the Timminses have asked us to dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Topham Sawyer.&mdash;&ldquo;Ask us to dinner! What d&mdash;&mdash;-
+      impudence!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Topham Sawyer.&mdash;&ldquo;The most dangerous and insolent revolutionary
+      principles are abroad, Mr. Sawyer; and I shall write and hint as much to
+      these persons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Topham Sawyer.&mdash;&ldquo;No, d&mdash;- it, Joanna: they are my
+      constituents and we must go. Write a civil note, and say we will come to
+      their party.&rdquo; (He resumes the perusal of 'The times,' and Mrs. Topham
+      Sawyer writes)&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MY DEAR ROSA,&mdash;We shall have GREAT PLEASURE in joining your little
+      party. I do not reply in the third person, as WE ARE OLD FRIENDS, you
+      know, and COUNTRY NEIGHBORS. I hope your mamma is well: present my KINDEST
+      REMEMBRANCES to her, and I hope we shall see much MORE of each other in
+      the summer, when we go down to the Sawpits (for going abroad is out of the
+      question in these DREADFUL TIMES). With a hundred kisses to your dear
+      little PET,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Believe me your attached
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;J. T. S.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She said Pet, because she did not know whether Rosa's child was a girl or
+      boy: and Mrs. Timmins was very much pleased with the kind and gracious
+      nature of the reply to her invitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next persons whom little Mrs. Timmins was bent upon asking, were Mr.
+      and Mrs. John Rowdy, of the firm of Stumpy, Rowdy and Co., of Brobdingnag
+      Gardens, of the Prairie, Putney, and of Lombard Street, City.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Timinins and Mrs. Rowdy had been brought up at the same school
+      together, and there was always a little rivalry between them, from the day
+      when they contended for the French prize at school to last week, when each
+      had a stall at the Fancy Fair for the benefit of the Daughters of Decayed
+      Muffin-men; and when Mrs. Timmins danced against Mrs. Rowdy in the Scythe
+      Mazurka at the Polish Ball, headed by Mrs. Hugh Slasher. Rowdy took
+      twenty-three pounds more than Timmins in the Muffin transaction (for she
+      had possession of a kettle-holder worked by the hands of R-y-lty, which
+      brought crowds to her stall); but in the Mazurka Rosa conquered: she has
+      the prettiest little foot possible (which in a red boot and silver heel
+      looked so lovely that even the Chinese ambassador remarked it), whereas
+      Mrs. Rowdy's foot is no trifle, as Lord Cornbury acknowledged when it came
+      down on his lordship's boot-tip as they danced together amongst the
+      Scythes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These people are ruining themselves,&rdquo; said Mrs. John Rowdy to her
+      husband, on receiving the pink note. It was carried round by that rogue of
+      a buttony page in the evening; and he walked to Brobdingnag Gardens, and
+      in the Park afterwards, with a young lady who is kitchen-maid at 27, and
+      who is not more than fourteen years older than little Buttons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These people are ruining themselves,&rdquo; said Mrs. John to her husband.
+      &ldquo;Rosa says she has asked the Bungays.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bungays indeed! Timmins was always a tuft-hunter,&rdquo; said Rowdy, who had
+      been at college with the barrister, and who, for his own part, has no more
+      objection to a lord than you or I have; and adding, &ldquo;Hang him, what
+      business has HE to be giving parties?&rdquo; allowed Mrs. Rowdy, nevertheless,
+      to accept Rosa's invitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I go to business to-morrow, I will just have a look at Mr. Fitz's
+      account,&rdquo; Mr. Rowdy thought; &ldquo;and if it is overdrawn, as it usually is,
+      why . . .&rdquo; The announcement of Mrs. Rowdy's brougham here put an end to
+      this agreeable train of thought; and the banker and his lady stepped into
+      it to join a snug little family-party of two-and-twenty, given by Mr. and
+      Mrs. Secondchop at their great house on the other side of the Park.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rowdys 2, Bungays 3, ourselves and mamma 3, 2 Sawyers,&rdquo; calculated little
+      Rosa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;General Gulpin,&rdquo; Rosa continued, &ldquo;eats a great deal, and is very stupid,
+      but he looks well at table with his star and ribbon. Let us put HIM down!&rdquo;
+       and she noted down &ldquo;Sir Thomas and Lady Gulpin, 2. Lord Castlemouldy, 1.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will make your party abominably genteel and stupid,&rdquo; groaned Timmins.
+      &ldquo;Why don't you ask some of our old friends? Old Mrs. Portman has asked us
+      twenty times, I am sure, within the last two years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the last time we went there, there was pea-soup for dinner!&rdquo; Mrs.
+      Timmins said, with a look of ineffable scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody can have been kinder than the Hodges have always been to us; and
+      some sort of return we might make, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Return, indeed! A pretty sound it is on the staircase to hear 'Mr. and
+      Mrs. 'Odge and Miss 'Odges' pronounced by Billiter, who always leaves his
+      h's out. No, no: see attorneys at your chambers, my dear&mdash;but what
+      could the poor creatures do in OUR society?&rdquo; And so, one by one, Timmins's
+      old friends were tried and eliminated by Mrs. Timmins, just as if she had
+      been an Irish Attorney-General, and they so many Catholics on Mr.
+      Mitchel's jury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Fitzroy insisted that the party should be of her very best company.
+      Funnyman, the great wit, was asked, because of his jokes; and Mrs. Butt,
+      on whom he practises; and Potter, who is asked because everybody else asks
+      him; and Mr. Ranville Ranville of the Foreign Office, who might give some
+      news of the Spanish squabble; and Botherby, who has suddenly sprung up
+      into note because he is intimate with the French Revolution, and visits
+      Ledru-Rollin and Lamartine. And these, with a couple more who are amis de
+      la maison, made up the twenty, whom Mrs. Timmins thought she might safely
+      invite to her little dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the deuce of it was, that when the answers to the invitations came
+      back, everybody accepted! Here was a pretty quandary. How they were to get
+      twenty into their dining-room was a calculation which poor Timmins could
+      not solve at all; and he paced up and down the little room in dismay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pooh!&rdquo; said Rosa with a laugh. &ldquo;Your sister Blanche looked very well in
+      one of my dresses last year; and you know how stout she is. We will find
+      some means to accommodate them all, depend upon it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. John Rowdy's note to dear Rosa, accepting the latter's invitation,
+      was a very gracious and kind one; and Mrs. Fitz showed it to her husband
+      when he came back from chambers. But there was another note which had
+      arrived for him by this time from Mr. Rowdy&mdash;or rather from the firm;
+      and to the effect that Mr. F. Timmins had overdrawn his account 28L. 18s.
+      6d., and was requested to pay that sum to his obedient servants, Stumpy,
+      Rowdy and Co.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      And Timmins did not like to tell his wife that the contending parties in
+      the Lough Foyle and Lough Corrib Railroad had come to a settlement, and
+      that the fifteen guineas a day had consequently determined. &ldquo;I have had
+      seven days of it, though,&rdquo; he thought; &ldquo;and that will be enough to pay for
+      the desk, the dinner, and the glasses, and make all right with Stumpy and
+      Rowdy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The cards for dinner having been issued, it became the duty of Mrs.
+      Timmins to make further arrangements respecting the invitations to the
+      tea-party which was to follow the more substantial meal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These arrangements are difficult, as any lady knows who is in the habit of
+      entertaining her friends. There are&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      People who are offended if you ask them to tea whilst others have been
+      asked to dinner;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      People who are offended if you ask them to tea at all; and cry out
+      furiously, &ldquo;Good heavens! Jane my love, why do these Timminses suppose
+      that I am to leave my dinner-table to attend their &mdash;&mdash;-
+      soiree?&rdquo; (the dear reader may fill up the &mdash;&mdash;- to any strength,
+      according to his liking)&mdash;or, &ldquo;Upon my word, William my dear, it is
+      too much to ask us to pay twelve shillings for a brougham, and to spend I
+      don't know how much in gloves, just to make our curtsies in Mrs. Timmins's
+      little drawing-room.&rdquo; Mrs. Moser made the latter remark about the Timmins
+      affair, while the former was uttered by Mr. Grumpley, barrister-at-law, to
+      his lady, in Gloucester Place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That there are people who are offended if you don't ask them at all, is a
+      point which I suppose nobody will question. Timmins's earliest friend in
+      life was Simmins, whose wife and family have taken a cottage at Mortlake
+      for the season.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can't ask them to come out of the country,&rdquo; Rosa said to her Fitzroy&mdash;(between
+      ourselves, she was delighted that Mrs. Simmins was out of the way, and was
+      as jealous of her as every well-regulated woman should be of her husband's
+      female friends)&mdash;&ldquo;we can't ask them to come so far for the evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, no, certainly.&rdquo; said Fitzroy, who has himself no very great opinion
+      of a tea-party; and so the Simminses were cut out of the list.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And what was the consequence? The consequence was, that Simmins and
+      Timmins cut when they met at Westminster; that Mrs. Simmins sent back all
+      the books which she had borrowed from Rosa, with a withering note of
+      thanks; that Rosa goes about saying that Mrs. Simmins squints; that Mrs.
+      S., on her side, declares that Rosa is crooked, and behaved shamefully to
+      Captain Hicks in marrying Fitzroy over him, though she was forced to do it
+      by her mother, and prefers the Captain to her husband to this day. If, in
+      a word, these two men could be made to fight, I believe their wives would
+      not be displeased; and the reason of all this misery, rage, and
+      dissension, lies in a poor little twopenny dinner-party in Lilliput
+      Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, the guests, both for before and after meat, having been asked, old
+      Mrs. Gashleigh, Rosa's mother&mdash;(and, by consequence, Fitzroy's DEAR
+      mother-in-law, though I promise you that &ldquo;dear&rdquo; is particularly sarcastic)&mdash;Mrs.
+      Gashleigh of course was sent for, and came with Miss Eliza Gashleigh, who
+      plays on the guitar, and Emily, who limps a little, but plays sweetly on
+      the concertina. They live close by&mdash;trust them for that. Your
+      mother-in-law is always within hearing, thank our stars for the attention
+      of the dear women. The Gashleighs, I say, live close by, and came early on
+      the morning after Rosa's notes had been issued for the dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Fitzroy, who was in his little study, which opens into his little
+      dining-room&mdash;one of those absurd little rooms which ought to be
+      called a gentleman's pantry, and is scarcely bigger than a shower-bath, or
+      a state cabin in a ship&mdash;when Fitzroy heard his mother-in-law's
+      knock, and her well-known scuffling and chattering in the passage&mdash;in
+      which she squeezed up young Buttons, the page, while she put questions to
+      him regarding baby, and the cook's health, and whether she had taken what
+      Mrs. Gashleigh had sent overnight, and the housemaid's health, and whether
+      Mr. Timmins had gone to chambers or not&mdash;and when, after this
+      preliminary chatter, Buttons flung open the door, announcing&mdash;&ldquo;Mrs.
+      Gashleigh and the young ladies,&rdquo; Fitzroy laid down his Times newspaper
+      with an expression that had best not be printed here, and took his hat and
+      walked away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gashleigh has never liked him since he left off calling her mamma,
+      and kissing her. But he said he could not stand it any longer&mdash;he was
+      hanged if he would. So he went away to chambers, leaving the field clear
+      to Rosa, mamma, and the two dear girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Or to one of them, rather: for before leaving the house, he thought he
+      would have a look at little Fitzroy up stairs in the nursery, and he found
+      the child in the hands of his maternal aunt Eliza, who was holding him and
+      pinching him as if he had been her guitar, I suppose; so that the little
+      fellow bawled pitifully&mdash;and his father finally quitted the premises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No sooner was he gone, although the party was still a fortnight off, than
+      the women pounced upon his little study, and began to put it in order.
+      Some of his papers they pushed up over the bookcase, some they put behind
+      the Encyclopaedia. Some they crammed into the drawers&mdash;where Mrs.
+      Gashleigh found three cigars, which she pocketed, and some letters, over
+      which she cast her eye; and by Fitz's return they had the room as neat as
+      possible, and the best glass and dessert-service mustered on the study
+      table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a very neat and handsome service, as you may be sure Mrs. Gashleigh
+      thought, whose rich uncle had purchased it for the young couple, at Spode
+      and Copeland's; but it was only for twelve persons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was agreed that it would be, in all respects, cheaper and better to
+      purchase a dozen more dessert-plates; and with &ldquo;my silver basket in the
+      centre,&rdquo; Mrs. G. said (she is always bragging about that confounded
+      bread-basket), &ldquo;we need not have any extra china dishes, and the table
+      will look very pretty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On making a roll-call of the glass, it was calculated that at least a
+      dozen or so tumblers, four or five dozen wines, eight water-bottles, and a
+      proper quantity of ice-plates, were requisite; and that, as they would
+      always be useful, it would be best to purchase the articles immediately.
+      Fitz tumbled over the basket containing them, which stood in the hall as
+      he came in from chambers, and over the boy who had brought them&mdash;and
+      the little bill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The women had had a long debate, and something like a quarrel, it must be
+      owned, over the bill of fare. Mrs. Gashleigh, who had lived a great part
+      of her life in Devonshire, and kept house in great state there, was famous
+      for making some dishes, without which, she thought, no dinner could be
+      perfect. When she proposed her mock-turtle, and stewed pigeons, and
+      gooseberry-cream, Rosa turned up her nose&mdash;a pretty little nose it
+      was, by the way, and with a natural turn in that direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mock-turtle in June, mamma!&rdquo; said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was good enough for your grandfather, Rosa,&rdquo; the mamma replied: &ldquo;it
+      was good enough for the Lord High Admiral, when he was at Plymouth; it was
+      good enough for the first men in the county, and relished by Lord
+      Fortyskewer and Lord Rolls; Sir Lawrence Porker ate twice of it after
+      Exeter races; and I think it might be good enough for&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will NOT have it, mamma!&rdquo; said Rosa, with a stamp of her foot; and Mrs.
+      Gashleigh knew what resolution there was in that. Once, when she had tried
+      to physic the baby, there had been a similar fight between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Mrs. Gashleigh made out a carte, in which the soup was left with a dash&mdash;a
+      melancholy vacuum; and in which the pigeons were certainly thrust in among
+      the entrees; but Rosa determined they never should make an entree at all
+      into HER dinner-party, but that she would have the dinner her own way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Fitz returned, then, and after he had paid the little bill of 6L.
+      14s. 6d. for the glass, Rosa flew to him with her sweetest smiles, and the
+      baby in her arms. And after she had made him remark how the child grew
+      every day more and more like him, and after she had treated him to a
+      number of compliments and caresses, which it were positively fulsome to
+      exhibit in public, and after she had soothed him into good humor by her
+      artless tenderness, she began to speak to him about some little points
+      which she had at heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She pointed out with a sigh how shabby the old curtains looked since the
+      dear new glasses which her darling Fitz had given her had been put up in
+      the drawing-room. Muslin curtains cost nothing, and she must and would
+      have them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The muslin curtains were accorded. She and Fitz went and bought them at
+      Shoolbred's, when you may be sure she treated herself likewise to a neat,
+      sweet pretty half-mourning (for the Court, you know, is in mourning)&mdash;a
+      neat sweet barege, or calimanco, or bombazine, or tiffany, or some such
+      thing; but Madame Camille, of Regent Street, made it up, and Rosa looked
+      like an angel in it on the night of her little dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, my sweet,&rdquo; she continued, after the curtains had been accorded,
+      &ldquo;mamma and I have been talking about the dinner. She wants to make it very
+      expensive, which I cannot allow. I have been thinking of a delightful and
+      economical plan, and you, my sweetest Fitz, must put it into execution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have cooked a mutton-chop when I was in chambers,&rdquo; Fitz said with a
+      laugh. &ldquo;Am I to put on a cap and an apron?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No: but you are to go to the 'Megatherium Club' (where, you wretch, you
+      are always going without my leave), and you are to beg Monsieur
+      Mirobolant, your famous cook, to send you one of his best aides-de-camp,
+      as I know he will, and with his aid we can dress the dinner and the
+      confectionery at home for ALMOST NOTHING, and we can show those
+      purse-proud Topham Sawyers and Rowdys that the HUMBLE COTTAGE can furnish
+      forth an elegant entertainment as well as the gilded halls of wealth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fitz agreed to speak to Monsieur Mirobolant. If Rosa had had a fancy for
+      the cook of the Prime Minister, I believe the deluded creature of a
+      husband would have asked Lord John for the loan of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Fitzroy Timmins, whose taste for wine is remarkable for so young a man, is
+      a member of the committee of the &ldquo;Megatherium Club,&rdquo; and the great
+      Mirobolant, good-natured as all great men are, was only too happy to
+      oblige him. A young friend and protege of his, of considerable merit, M.
+      Cavalcadour, happened to be disengaged through the lamented death of Lord
+      Hauncher, with whom young Cavalcadour had made his debut as an artist. He
+      had nothing to refuse to his master, Mirobolant, and would impress himself
+      to be useful to a gourmet so distinguished as Monsieur Timmins. Fitz went
+      away as pleased as Punch with this encomium of the great Mirobolant, and
+      was one of those who voted against the decreasing of Mirobolant's salary,
+      when the measure was proposed by Mr. Parings, Colonel Close, and the Screw
+      party in the committee of the club.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Faithful to the promise of his great master, the youthful Cavalcadour
+      called in Lilliput Street the next day. A rich crimson velvet waistcoat,
+      with buttons of blue glass and gold, a variegated blue satin stock, over
+      which a graceful mosaic chain hung in glittering folds, a white hat worn
+      on one side of his long curling ringlets, redolent with the most
+      delightful hair-oil&mdash;one of those white hats which looks as if it had
+      been just skinned&mdash;and a pair of gloves not exactly of the color of
+      beurre frais, but of beurre that has been up the chimney, with a natty
+      cane with a gilt knob, completed the upper part at any rate, of the
+      costume of the young fellow whom the page introduced to Mrs. Timmins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her mamma and she had been just having a dispute about the
+      gooseberry-cream when Cavalcadour arrived. His presence silenced Mrs.
+      Gashleigh; and Rosa, in carrying on a conversation with him in the French
+      language&mdash;which she had acquired perfectly in an elegant finishing
+      establishment in Kensington Square&mdash;had a great advantage over her
+      mother, who could only pursue the dialogue with very much difficulty,
+      eying one or other interlocutor with an alarmed and suspicious look, and
+      gasping out &ldquo;We&rdquo; whenever she thought a proper opportunity arose for the
+      use of that affirmative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have two leetl menus weez me,&rdquo; said Cavalcadour to Mrs. Gashleigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Minews&mdash;yes,&mdash;oh, indeed?&rdquo; answered the lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two little cartes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, two carts! Oh, we,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Coming, I suppose?&rdquo; And she looked out
+      of the window to see if they were there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cavalcadour smiled. He produced from a pocket-book a pink paper and a blue
+      paper, on which he had written two bills of fare&mdash;the last two which
+      he had composed for the lamented Hauncher&mdash;and he handed these over
+      to Mrs. Fitzroy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor little woman was dreadfully puzzled with these documents, (she
+      has them in her possession still,) and began to read from the pink one as
+      follows:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                        &ldquo;DINER POUR 16 PERSONNES.
+
+                       Potage (clair) a la Rigodon.
+                       Do. a la Prince de Tombuctou.
+
+                              Deux Poissons.
+
+            Saumon de Severne                 Rougets Gratines
+             a la Boadicee.                    a la Cleopatre.
+
+                               Deux Releves.
+
+              Le Chapeau-a-trois-cornes farci a la Robespierre.
+                        Le Tire-botte a l'Odalisque.
+
+                               Six Entrees.
+                   Saute de Hannetons a l'Epingliere.
+                     Cotelettes a la Megatherium.
+                  Bourrasque de Veau a la Palsambleu.
+            Laitances de Carpe en goguette a la Reine Pomare.
+            Turban de Volaille a l'Archeveque de Cantorbery.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      And so on with the entremets, and hors d'oeuvres, and the rotis, and the
+      releves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame will see that the dinners are quite simple,&rdquo; said M. Cavalcadour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, quite!&rdquo; said Rosa, dreadfully puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which would Madame like?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which would we like, mamma?&rdquo; Rosa asked; adding, as if after a little
+      thought, &ldquo;I think, sir, we should prefer the blue one.&rdquo; At which Mrs.
+      Gashleigh nodded as knowingly as she could; though pink or blue, I defy
+      anybody to know what these cooks mean by their jargon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you please, Madame, we will go down below and examine the scene of
+      operations,&rdquo; Monsieur Cavalcadour said; and so he was marshalled down the
+      stairs to the kitchen, which he didn't like to name, and appeared before
+      the cook in all his splendor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He cast a rapid glance round the premises, and a smile of something like
+      contempt lighted up his features. &ldquo;Will you bring pen and ink, if you
+      please, and I will write down a few of the articles which will be
+      necessary for us? We shall require, if you please, eight more stew-pans, a
+      couple of braising-pans, eight saute-pans, six bainmarie-pans, a
+      freezing-pot with accessories, and a few more articles of which I will
+      inscribe the names.&rdquo; And Mr. Cavalcadour did so, dashing down, with the
+      rapidity of genius, a tremendous list of ironmongery goods, which he
+      handed over to Mrs. Timmins. She and her mamma were quite frightened by
+      the awful catalogue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will call three days hence and superintend the progress of matters; and
+      we will make the stock for the soup the day before the dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you think, sir,&rdquo; here interposed Mrs. Gashleigh, &ldquo;that one soup&mdash;a
+      fine rich mock-turtle, such as I have seen in the best houses in the West
+      of England, and such as the late Lord Fortyskewer&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will get what is wanted for the soups, if you please,&rdquo; Mr.
+      Cavalcadour continued, not heeding this interruption, and as bold as a
+      captain on his own quarter-deck: &ldquo;for the stock of clear soup, you will
+      get a leg of beef, a leg of veal, and a ham.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We, munseer,&rdquo; said the cook, dropping a terrified curtsy: &ldquo;a leg of beef,
+      a leg of veal, and a ham.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't serve a leg of veal at a party,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gashleigh; &ldquo;and a
+      leg of beef is not a company dish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, they are to make the stock of the clear soup,&rdquo; Mr. Cavalcadour
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;WHAT!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Gashleigh; and the cook repeated his former expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never, whilst I am in this house,&rdquo; cried out Mrs. Gashleigh, indignantly;
+      &ldquo;never in a Christian ENGLISH household; never shall such sinful waste be
+      permitted by ME. If you wish me to dine, Rosa, you must get a dinner less
+      EXPENSIVE. The Right Honorable Lord Fortyskewer could dine, sir, without
+      these wicked luxuries, and I presume my daughter's guests can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame is perfectly at liberty to decide,&rdquo; said M. Cavalcadour. &ldquo;I came
+      to oblige Madame and my good friend Mirobolant, not myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, sir, I think it WILL be too expensive,&rdquo; Rosa stammered in a
+      great flutter; &ldquo;but I am very much obliged to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Il n'y a point d'obligation, Madame,&rdquo; said Monsieur Alcide Camille
+      Cavalcadour in his most superb manner; and, making a splendid bow to the
+      lady of the house, was respectfully conducted to the upper regions by
+      little Buttons, leaving Rosa frightened, the cook amazed and silent, and
+      Mrs. Gashleigh boiling with indignation against the dresser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Up to that moment, Mrs. Blowser, the cook, who had come out of Devonshire
+      with Mrs. Gashleigh (of course that lady garrisoned her daughter's house
+      with servants, and expected them to give her information of everything
+      which took place there) up to that moment, I say, the cook had been quite
+      contented with that subterraneous station which she occupied in life, and
+      had a pride in keeping her kitchen neat, bright, and clean. It was, in her
+      opinion, the comfortablest room in the house (we all thought so when we
+      came down of a night to smoke there), and the handsomest kitchen in
+      Lilliput Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But after the visit of Cavalcadour, the cook became quite discontented and
+      uneasy in her mind. She talked in a melancholy manner over the
+      area-railings to the cooks at twenty-three and twenty-five. She stepped
+      over the way, and conferred with the cook there. She made inquiries at the
+      baker's and at other places about the kitchens in the great houses in
+      Brobdingnag Gardens, and how many spits, bangmarry-pans, and stoo-pans
+      they had. She thought she could not do with an occasional help, but must
+      have a kitchen-maid. And she was often discovered by a gentleman of the
+      police force, who was, I believe, her cousin, and occasionally visited her
+      when Mrs. Gashleigh was not in the house or spying it:&mdash;she was
+      discovered seated with MRS. RUNDELL in her lap, its leaves bespattered
+      with her tears. &ldquo;My pease be gone, Pelisse,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;zins I zaw that
+      ther Franchman!&rdquo; And it was all the faithful fellow could do to console
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&mdash;&mdash; the dinner!&rdquo; said Timmins, in a rage at last. &ldquo;Having it
+      cooked in the house is out of the question. The bother of it, and the row
+      your mother makes, are enough to drive one mad. It won't happen again, I
+      can promise you, Rosa. Order it at Fubsby's, at once. You can have
+      everything from Fubsby's&mdash;from footmen to saltspoons. Let's go and
+      order it at Fubsby's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Darling, if you don't mind the expense, and it will be any relief to you,
+      let us do as you wish,&rdquo; Rosa said; and she put on her bonnet, and they
+      went off to the grand cook and confectioner of the Brobdingnag quarter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On the arm of her Fitzroy, Rosa went off to Fubsby's, that magnificent
+      shop at the corner of Parliament Place and Alicompayne Square,&mdash;a
+      shop into which the rogue had often cast a glance of approbation as he
+      passed: for there are not only the most wonderful and delicious cakes and
+      confections in the window, but at the counter there are almost sure to be
+      three or four of the prettiest women in the whole of this world, with
+      little darling caps of the last French make, with beautiful wavy hair, and
+      the neatest possible waists and aprons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, there they sit; and others, perhaps, besides Fitz have cast a
+      sheep's-eye through those enormous plate-glass windowpanes. I suppose it
+      is the fact of perpetually living among such a quantity of good things
+      that makes those young ladies so beautiful. They come into the place, let
+      us say, like ordinary people, and gradually grow handsomer and handsomer,
+      until they grow out into the perfect angels you see. It can't be
+      otherwise: if you and I, my dear fellow, were to have a course of that
+      place, we should become beautiful too. They live in an atmosphere of the
+      most delicious pine-apples, blanc-manges, creams, (some whipt, and some so
+      good that of course they don't want whipping,) jellies, tipsy-cakes,
+      cherry-brandy&mdash;one hundred thousand sweet and lovely things. Look at
+      the preserved fruits, look at the golden ginger, the outspreading ananas,
+      the darling little rogues of China oranges, ranged in the gleaming crystal
+      cylinders. Mon Dieu! Look at the strawberries in the leaves. Each of them
+      is as large nearly as a lady's reticule, and looks as if it had been
+      brought up in a nursery to itself. One of those strawberries is a meal for
+      those young ladies, behind the counter; they nibble off a little from the
+      side, and if they are very hungry, which can scarcely ever happen, they
+      are allowed to go to the crystal canisters and take out a rout-cake or
+      macaroon. In the evening they sit and tell each other little riddles out
+      of the bonbons; and when they wish to amuse themselves, they read the most
+      delightful remarks, in the French language, about Love, and Cupid, and
+      Beauty, before they place them inside the crackers. They always are
+      writing down good things into Mr. Fubsby's ledgers. It must be a perfect
+      feast to read them. Talk of the Garden of Eden! I believe it was nothing
+      to Mr. Fubsby's house; and I have no doubt that after those young ladies
+      have been there a certain time, they get to such a pitch of loveliness at
+      last, that they become complete angels, with wings sprouting out of their
+      lovely shoulders, when (after giving just a preparatory balance or two)
+      they fly up to the counter and perch there for a minute, hop down again,
+      and affectionately kiss the other young ladies, and say, &ldquo;Good-by, dears!
+      We shall meet again la haut.&rdquo; And then with a whir of their deliciously
+      scented wings, away they fly for good, whisking over the trees of
+      Brobdingnag Square, and up into the sky, as the policeman touches his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is up there that they invent the legends for the crackers, and the
+      wonderful riddles and remarks on the bonbons. No mortal, I am sure, could
+      write them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I never saw a man in such a state as Fitzroy Timmins in the presence of
+      those ravishing houris. Mrs. Fitz having explained that they required a
+      dinner for twenty persons, the chief young lady asked what Mr. and Mrs.
+      Fitz would like, and named a thousand things, each better than the other,
+      to all of which Fitz instantly said yes. The wretch was in such a state of
+      infatuation that I believe if that lady had proposed to him a fricasseed
+      elephant, or a boa-constrictor in jelly, he would have said, &ldquo;O yes,
+      certainly; put it down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That Peri wrote down in her album a list of things which it would make
+      your mouth water to listen to. But she took it all quite calmly. Heaven
+      bless you! THEY don't care about things that are no delicacies to them!
+      But whatever she chose to write down, Fitzroy let her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the dinner and dessert were ordered (at Fubsby's they furnish
+      everything: dinner and dessert, plate and china, servants in your own
+      livery, and, if you please, guests of title too), the married couple
+      retreated from that shop of wonders; Rosa delighted that the trouble of
+      the dinner was all off their hands but she was afraid it would be rather
+      expensive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing can be too expensive which pleases YOU, dear,&rdquo; Fitz said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the way, one of those young women was rather good-looking,&rdquo; Rosa
+      remarked: &ldquo;the one in the cap with the blue ribbons.&rdquo; (And she cast about
+      the shape of the cap in her mind, and determined to have exactly such
+      another.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think so? I didn't observe,&rdquo; said the miserable hypocrite by her side;
+      and when he had seen Rosa home, he went back, like an infamous fiend, to
+      order something else which he had forgotten, he said, at Fubsby's. Get out
+      of that Paradise, you cowardly, creeping, vile serpent you!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Until the day of the dinner, the infatuated fop was ALWAYS going to
+      Fubsby's. HE WAS REMARKED THERE. He used to go before he went to chambers
+      in the morning, and sometimes on his return from the Temple: but the
+      morning was the time which he preferred; and one day, when he went on one
+      of his eternal pretexts, and was chattering and flirting at the counter, a
+      lady who had been reading yesterday's paper and eating a halfpenny bun for
+      an hour in the back shop (if that paradise may be called a shop)&mdash;a
+      lady stepped forward, laid down the Morning Herald, and confronted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That lady was Mrs. Gashleigh. From that day the miserable Fitzroy was in
+      her power; and she resumed a sway over his house, to shake off which had
+      been the object of his life, and the result of many battles. And for a
+      mere freak&mdash;(for, on going into Fubsby's a week afterwards he found
+      the Peris drinking tea out of blue cups, and eating stale bread and
+      butter, when his absurd passion instantly vanished)&mdash;I say, for a
+      mere freak, the most intolerable burden of his life was put on his
+      shoulders again&mdash;his mother-in-law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the day before the little dinner took place&mdash;and I promise you we
+      shall come to it in the very next chapter&mdash;a tall and elegant
+      middle-aged gentleman, who might have passed for an earl but that there
+      was a slight incompleteness about his hands and feet, the former being
+      uncommonly red, and the latter large and irregular, was introduced to Mrs.
+      Timmins by the page, who announced him as Mr. Truncheon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm Truncheon, Ma'am,&rdquo; he said, with a low bow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed!&rdquo; said Rosa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About the dinner M'm, from Fubsby's, M'm. As you have no butler, M'm, I
+      presume you will wish me to act as sich. I shall bring two persons as
+      haids to-morrow; both answers to the name of John. I'd best, if you
+      please, inspect the premisis, and will think you to allow your young man
+      to show me the pantry and kitching.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Truncheon spoke in a low voice, and with the deepest and most respectful
+      melancholy. There is not much expression in his eyes, but from what there
+      is, you would fancy that he was oppressed by a secret sorrow. Rosa
+      trembled as she surveyed this gentleman's size, his splendid appearance,
+      and gravity. &ldquo;I am sure,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I never shall dare to ask him to hand
+      a glass of water.&rdquo; Even Mrs. Gashleigh, when she came on the morning of
+      the actual dinner-party, to superintend matters, was cowed, and retreated
+      from the kitchen before the calm majesty of Truncheon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet that great man was, like all the truly great&mdash;affable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He put aside his coat and waistcoat (both of evening cut, and looking
+      prematurely splendid as he walked the streets in noonday), and did not
+      disdain to rub the glasses and polish the decanters, and to show young
+      Buttons the proper mode of preparing these articles for a dinner. And
+      while he operated, the maids, and Buttons, and cook, when she could&mdash;and
+      what had she but the vegetables to boil?&mdash;crowded round him, and
+      listened with wonder as he talked of the great families as he had lived
+      with. That man, as they saw him there before them, had been cab-boy to
+      Lord Tantallan, valet to the Earl of Bareacres, and groom of the chambers
+      to the Duchess Dowager of Fitzbattleaxe. Oh, it was delightful to hear Mr.
+      Truncheon!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On the great, momentous, stupendous day of the dinner, my beloved female
+      reader may imagine that Fitzroy Timmins was sent about his business at an
+      early hour in the morning, while the women began to make preparations to
+      receive their guests. &ldquo;There will be no need of your going to Fubsby's,&rdquo;
+       Mrs. Gashleigh said to him, with a look that drove him out of doors.
+      &ldquo;Everything that we require has been ordered THERE! You will please to be
+      back here at six o'clock, and not sooner: and I presume you will acquiesce
+      in my arrangements about the WINE?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O yes, mamma,&rdquo; said the prostrate son-in-law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In so large a party&mdash;a party beyond some folks MEANS&mdash;expensive
+      WINES are ABSURD. The light sherry at 26s., the champagne at 42s.; and you
+      are not to go beyond 36s. for the claret and port after dinner. Mind,
+      coffee will be served; and you come up stairs after two rounds of the
+      claret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, of course,&rdquo; acquiesced the wretch; and hurried out of the
+      house to his chambers, and to discharge the commissions with which the
+      womankind had intrusted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Mrs. Gashleigh, you might have heard her bawling over the house the
+      whole day long. That admirable woman was everywhere: in the kitchen until
+      the arrival of Truncheon, before whom she would not retreat without a
+      battle; on the stairs; in Fitzroy's dressing-room; and in Fitzroy minor's
+      nursery, to whom she gave a dose of her own composition, while the nurse
+      was sent out on a pretext to make purchases of garnish for the dishes to
+      be served for the little dinner. Garnish for the dishes! As if the folks
+      at Fubsby's could not garnish dishes better than Gashleigh, with her
+      stupid old-world devices of laurel-leaves, parsley, and cut turnips! Why,
+      there was not a dish served that day that was not covered over with
+      skewers, on which truffles, crayfish, mushrooms, and forced-meat were
+      impaled. When old Gashleigh went down with her barbarian bunches of holly
+      and greens to stick about the meats, even the cook saw their incongruity,
+      and, at Truncheon's orders, flung the whole shrubbery into the dust-house,
+      where, while poking about the premises, you may be sure Mrs. G. saw it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every candle which was to be burned that night (including the tallow
+      candle, which she said was a good enough bed-light for Fitzroy) she stuck
+      into the candlesticks with her own hands, giving her own high-shouldered
+      plated candlesticks of the year 1798 the place of honor. She upset all
+      poor Rosa's floral arrangements, turning the nosegays from one vase into
+      the other without any pity, and was never tired of beating, and pushing,
+      and patting, and WHAPPING the curtain and sofa draperies into shape in the
+      little drawing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Fitz's own apartments she revelled with peculiar pleasure. It has been
+      described how she had sacked his study and pushed away his papers, some of
+      which, including three cigars, and the commencement of an article for the
+      Law Magazine, &ldquo;Lives of the Sheriffs' Officers,&rdquo; he has never been able to
+      find to this day. Mamma now went into the little room in the back regions,
+      which is Fitz's dressing-room, (and was destined to be a cloak-room,) and
+      here she rummaged to her heart's delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In an incredibly short space of time she examined all his outlying
+      pockets, drawers, and letters; she inspected his socks and handkerchiefs
+      in the top drawers; and on the dressing-table, his razors, shaving-strop,
+      and hair-oil. She carried off his silver-topped scent-bottle out of his
+      dressing-case, and a half-dozen of his favorite pills (which Fitz
+      possesses in common with every well-regulated man), and probably
+      administered them to her own family. His boots, glossy pumps, and slippers
+      she pushed into the shower-bath, where the poor fellow stepped into them
+      the next morning, in the midst of a pool in which they were lying. The
+      baby was found sucking his boot-hooks the next day in the nursery; and as
+      for the bottle of varnish for his shoes, (which he generally paints upon
+      the trees himself, having a pretty taste in that way,) it could never be
+      found to the present hour but it was remarked that the young Master
+      Gashleighs, when they came home for the holidays, always wore lacquered
+      highlows; and the reader may draw his conclusions from THAT fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the course of the day all the servants gave Mrs. Timmins warning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cook said she coodn't abear it no longer, 'aving Mrs. G. always about
+      her kitching, with her fingers in all the saucepans. Mrs. G. had got her
+      the place, but she preferred one as Mrs. G. didn't get for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The nurse said she was come to nuss Master Fitzroy, and knew her duty; his
+      grandmamma wasn't his nuss, and was always aggrawating her,&mdash;missus
+      must shoot herself elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The housemaid gave utterance to the same sentiments in language more
+      violent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Buttons bounced up to his mistress, said he was butler of the
+      family, Mrs. G. was always poking about his pantry, and dam if he'd stand
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At every moment Rosa grew more and more bewildered. The baby howled a
+      great deal during the day. His large china christening-bowl was cracked by
+      Mrs. Gashleigh altering the flowers in it, and pretending to be very cool,
+      whilst her hands shook with rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pray go on, mamma,&rdquo; Rosa said with tears in her eyes. &ldquo;Should you like to
+      break the chandelier?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ungrateful, unnatural child!&rdquo; bellowed the other. &ldquo;Only that I know you
+      couldn't do without me, I'd leave the house this minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you wish,&rdquo; said Rosa; but Mrs. G. DIDN'T wish: and in this juncture
+      Truncheon arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That officer surveyed the dining-room, laid the cloth there with admirable
+      precision and neatness; ranged the plate on the sideboard with graceful
+      accuracy, but objected to that old thing in the centre, as he called Mrs.
+      Gashleigh's silver basket, as cumbrous and useless for the table, where
+      they would want all the room they could get.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Order was not restored to the house, nor, indeed, any decent progress
+      made, until this great man came: but where there was a revolt before, and
+      a general disposition to strike work and to yell out defiance against Mrs.
+      Gashleigh, who was sitting bewildered and furious in the drawing-room&mdash;where
+      there was before commotion, at the appearance of the master-spirit, all
+      was peace and unanimity: the cook went back to her pans, the housemaid
+      busied herself with the china and glass, cleaning some articles and
+      breaking others, Buttons sprang up and down the stairs, obedient to the
+      orders of his chief, and all things went well and in their season.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At six, the man with the wine came from Binney and Latham's. At a quarter
+      past six, Timmins himself arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At half past six he might have been heard shouting out for his varnished
+      boots but we know where THOSE had been hidden&mdash;and for his dressing
+      things; but Mrs. Gashleigh had put them away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As in his vain inquiries for these articles he stood shouting, &ldquo;Nurse!
+      Buttons! Rosa my dear!&rdquo; and the most fearful execrations up and down the
+      stairs, Mr. Truncheon came out on him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Egscuse me, sir,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;but it's impawsable. We can't dine twenty at
+      that table&mdash;not if you set 'em out awinder, we can't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's to be done?&rdquo; asked Fitzroy, in an agony; &ldquo;they've all said they'd
+      come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't do it,&rdquo; said the other; &ldquo;with two top and bottom&mdash;and your
+      table is as narrow as a bench&mdash;we can't hold more than heighteen, and
+      then each person's helbows will be into his neighbor's cheer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rosa! Mrs. Gashleigh!&rdquo; cried out Timmins, &ldquo;come down and speak to this
+      gentl&mdash;this&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Truncheon, sir,&rdquo; said the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The women descended from the drawing-room. &ldquo;Look and see, ladies,&rdquo; he
+      said, inducting them into the dining-room: &ldquo;there's the room, there's the
+      table laid for heighteen, and I defy you to squeege in more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One person in a party always fails,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gashleigh, getting
+      alarmed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's nineteen,&rdquo; Mr. Truncheon remarked. &ldquo;We must knock another hoff,
+      Ma'm.&rdquo; And he looked her hard in the face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gashleigh was very red and nervous, and paced, or rather squeezed
+      round the table (it was as much as she could do). The chairs could not be
+      put any closer than they were. It was impossible, unless the convive sat
+      as a centre-piece in the middle, to put another guest at that table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at that lady movin' round, sir. You see now the difficklty. If my
+      men wasn't thinner, they couldn't hoperate at all,&rdquo; Mr. Truncheon
+      observed, who seemed to have a spite to Mrs. Gashleigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is to be done?&rdquo; she said, with purple accents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dearest mamma,&rdquo; Rosa cried out, &ldquo;you must stop at home&mdash;how sorry
+      I am!&rdquo; And she shot one glance at Fitzroy, who shot another at the great
+      Truncheon, who held down his eyes. &ldquo;We could manage with heighteen,&rdquo; he
+      said, mildly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Gashleigh gave a hideous laugh.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      She went away. At eight o'clock she was pacing at the corner of the
+      street, and actually saw the company arrive. First came the Topham
+      Sawyers, in their light-blue carriage with the white hammercloth and blue
+      and white ribbons&mdash;their footmen drove the house down with the
+      knocking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then followed the ponderous and snuff-colored vehicle, with faded gilt
+      wheels and brass earl's coronets all over it, the conveyance of the House
+      of Bungay. The Countess of Bungay and daughter stepped out of the
+      carriage. The fourteenth Earl of Bungay couldn't come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir Thomas and Lady Gulpin's fly made its appearance, from which issued
+      the General with his star, and Lady Gulpin in yellow satin. The Rowdys'
+      brougham followed next; after which Mrs. Butt's handsome equipage drove
+      up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two friends of the house, young gentlemen from the Temple, now arrived
+      in cab No. 9996. We tossed up, in fact, which should pay the fare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Ranville Ranville walked, and was dusting his boots as the Templars
+      drove up. Lord Castlemouldy came out of a twopenny omnibus. Funnyman, the
+      wag, came last, whirling up rapidly in a hansom, just as Mrs. Gashleigh,
+      with rage in her heart, was counting that two people had failed, and that
+      there were only seventeen after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Truncheon passed our names to Mr. Billiter, who bawled them out on the
+      stairs. Rosa was smiling in a pink dress, and looking as fresh as an
+      angel, and received her company with that grace which has always
+      characterized her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment of the dinner arrived, old Lady Bungay scuffled off on the arm
+      of Fitzroy, while the rear was brought up by Rosa and Lord Castlemouldy,
+      of Ballyshanvanvoght Castle, co, Tipperary. Some fellows who had the luck
+      took down ladies to dinner. I was not sorry to be out of the way of Mrs.
+      Rowdy, with her dandified airs, or of that high and mighty county
+      princess, Mrs. Topham Sawyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Of course it does not become the present writer, who has partaken of the
+      best entertainment which his friends could supply, to make fun of their
+      (somewhat ostentatious, as it must be confessed) hospitality. If they gave
+      a dinner beyond their means, it is no business of mine. I hate a man who
+      goes and eats a friend's meat, and then blabs the secrets of the mahogany.
+      Such a man deserves never to be asked to dinner again; and though at the
+      close of a London season that seems no great loss, and you sicken of a
+      whitebait as you would of a whale&mdash;yet we must always remember that
+      there's another season coming, and hold our tongues for the present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for describing, then, the mere victuals on Timmins's table, that would
+      be absurd. Everybody&mdash;(I mean of the genteel world of course, of
+      which I make no doubt the reader is a polite ornament)&mdash;Everybody has
+      the same everything in London. You see the same coats, the same dinners,
+      the same boiled fowls and mutton, the same cutlets, fish, and cucumbers,
+      the same lumps of Wenham Lake ice, &amp;c. The waiters with white
+      neck-cloths are as like each other everywhere as the peas which they hand
+      round with the ducks of the second course. Can't any one invent anything
+      new?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only difference between Timmins's dinner and his neighbor's was, that
+      he had hired, as we have said, the greater part of the plate, and that his
+      cowardly conscience magnified faults and disasters of which no one else
+      probably took heed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Rosa thought, from the supercilious air with which Mrs. Topham Sawyer
+      was eying the plate and other arrangements, that she was remarking the
+      difference of the ciphers on the forks and spoons&mdash;which had, in
+      fact, been borrowed from every one of Fitzroy's friends&mdash;(I know, for
+      instance, that he had my six, among others, and only returned five, along
+      with a battered old black-pronged plated abomination, which I have no
+      doubt belongs to Mrs. Gashleigh, whom I hereby request to send back mine
+      in exchange)&mdash;their guilty consciences, I say, made them fancy that
+      every one was spying out their domestic deficiencies: whereas, it is
+      probable that nobody present thought of their failings at all. People
+      never do: they never see holes in their neighbors' coats&mdash;they are
+      too indolent, simple, and charitable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some things, however, one could not help remarking: for instance, though
+      Fitz is my closest friend, yet could I avoid seeing and being amused by
+      his perplexity and his dismal efforts to be facetious? His eye wandered
+      all round the little room with quick uneasy glances, very different from
+      those frank and jovial looks with which he is accustomed to welcome you to
+      a leg of mutton; and Rosa, from the other end of the table, and over the
+      flowers, entree dishes, and wine-coolers, telegraphed him with signals of
+      corresponding alarm. Poor devils! why did they ever go beyond that leg of
+      mutton?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Funnyman was not brilliant in conversation, scarcely opening his mouth,
+      except for the purposes of feasting. The fact is, our friend Tom Dawson
+      was at table, who knew all his stories, and in his presence the greatest
+      wag is always silent and uneasy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fitz has a very pretty wit of his own, and a good reputation on circuit;
+      but he is timid before great people. And indeed the presence of that awful
+      Lady Bungay on his right hand was enough to damp him. She was in court
+      mourning (for the late Prince of Schlippenschloppen). She had on a large
+      black funereal turban and appurtenances, and a vast breastplate of
+      twinkling, twiddling black bugles. No wonder a man could not be gay in
+      talking to HER.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rowdy and Mrs. Topham Sawyer love each other as women do who have the
+      same receiving nights, and ask the same society; they were only separated
+      by Ranville Ranville, who tries to be well with both and they talked at
+      each other across him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Topham and Rowdy growled out a conversation about Rum, Ireland, and the
+      Navigation Laws, quite unfit for print. Sawyer never speaks three words
+      without mentioning the House and the Speaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Irish Peer said nothing (which was a comfort) but he ate and drank of
+      everything which came in his way; and cut his usual absurd figure in dyed
+      whiskers and a yellow under-waistcoat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      General Gulpin sported his star, and looked fat and florid, but
+      melancholy. His wife ordered away his dinner, just like honest Sancho's
+      physician at Barataria.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Botherby's stories about Lamartine are as old as the hills, since the
+      barricades of 1848; and he could not get in a word or cut the slightest
+      figure. And as for Tom Dawson, he was carrying on an undertoned small-talk
+      with Lady Barbara St. Mary's, so that there was not much conversation
+      worth record going on WITHIN the dining-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside it was different. Those houses in Lilliput Street are so
+      uncommonly compact, that you can hear everything which takes place all
+      over the tenement; and so&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the awful pauses of the banquet, and the hall-door being furthermore
+      open, we had the benefit of hearing:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cook, and the occasional cook, below stairs, exchanging rapid phrases
+      regarding the dinner;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The smash of the soup-tureen, and swift descent of the kitchen-maid and
+      soup-ladle down the stairs to the lower regions. This accident created a
+      laugh, and rather amused Fitzroy and the company, and caused Funnyman to
+      say, bowing to Rosa, that she was mistress of herself, though China fall.
+      But she did not heed him, for at that moment another noise commenced,
+      namely, that of&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The baby in the upper rooms, who commenced a series of piercing yells,
+      which, though stopped by the sudden clapping to of the nursery-door, were
+      only more dreadful to the mother when suppressed. She would have given a
+      guinea to go up stairs and have done with the whole entertainment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A thundering knock came at the door very early after the dessert, and the
+      poor soul took a speedy opportunity of summoning the ladies to depart,
+      though you may be sure it was only old Mrs. Gashleigh, who had come with
+      her daughters&mdash;of course the first person to come. I saw her red gown
+      whisking up the stairs, which were covered with plates and dishes, over
+      which she trampled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of having any quiet after the retreat of the ladies, the house was
+      kept in a rattle, and the glasses jingled on the table as the flymen and
+      coachmen plied the knocker, and the soiree came in. From my place I could
+      see everything: the guests as they arrived (I remarked very few carriages,
+      mostly cabs and flies), and a little crowd of blackguard boys and
+      children, who were formed round the door, and gave ironical cheers to the
+      folks as they stepped out of their vehicles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the evening-party, if a crowd in the dog-days is pleasant, poor
+      Mrs. Timmins certainly had a successful soiree. You could hardly move on
+      the stair. Mrs. Sternhold broke in the banisters, and nearly fell through.
+      There was such a noise and chatter you could not hear the singing of the
+      Miss Gashleighs, which was no great loss. Lady Bungay could hardly get to
+      her carriage, being entangled with Colonel Wedgewood in the passage. An
+      absurd attempt was made to get up a dance of some kind; but before Mrs.
+      Crowder had got round the room, the hanging-lamp in the dining-room below
+      was stove in, and fell with a crash on the table, now prepared for
+      refreshment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why, in fact, did the Timminses give that party at all? It was quite
+      beyond their means. They have offended a score of their old friends, and
+      pleased none of their acquaintances. So angry were many who were not
+      asked, that poor Rosa says she must now give a couple more parties and
+      take in those not previously invited. And I know for a fact that Fubsby's
+      bill is not yet paid; nor Binney and Latham's the wine-merchants; that the
+      breakage and hire of glass and china cost ever so much money; that every
+      true friend of Timmins has cried out against his absurd extravagance, and
+      that now, when every one is going out of town, Fitz has hardly money to
+      pay his circuit, much more to take Rosa to a watering-place, as he wished
+      and promised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Mrs. Gashleigh, the only feasible plan of economy which she can
+      suggest, is that she could come and live with her daughter and son-in-law,
+      and that they should keep house together. If he agrees to this, she has a
+      little sum at the banker's, with which she would not mind easing his
+      present difficulties; and the poor wretch is so utterly bewildered and
+      crestfallen that it is very likely he will become her victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Topham Sawyers, when they go down into the country, will represent
+      Fitz as a ruined man and reckless prodigal; his uncle, the attorney, from
+      whom he has expectations, will most likely withdraw his business, and
+      adopt some other member of his family&mdash;Blanche Crowder for instance,
+      whose husband, the doctor, has had high words with poor Fitzroy already,
+      of course at the women's instigation. And all these accumulated miseries
+      fall upon the unfortunate wretch because he was good-natured, and his wife
+      would have a Little Dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Little Dinner at Timmins's, by 
+William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Little Dinner at Timmins's
+
+Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+Release Date: May 27, 2006 [EBook #2859]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S.
+
+
+by William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Fitzroy Timmins live in Lilliput Street, that neat little
+street which runs at right angles with the Park and Brobdingnag Gardens.
+It is a very genteel neighborhood, and I need not say they are of a good
+family.
+
+Especially Mrs. Timmins, as her mamma is always telling Mr. T. They are
+Suffolk people, and distantly related to the Right honorable the Earl of
+Bungay.
+
+Besides his house in Lilliput Street, Mr. Timmins has chambers in
+Fig-tree Court, Temple, and goes the Northern Circuit.
+
+The other day, when there was a slight difference about the payment of
+fees between the great Parliamentary Counsel and the Solicitors, Stoke
+and Pogers, of Great George Street, sent the papers of the Lough Foyle
+and Lough Corrib Junction Railway to Mr. Fitzroy Timmins, who was so
+elated that he instantly purchased a couple of looking-glasses for his
+drawing-rooms (the front room is 16 by 12, and the back, a tight but
+elegant apartment, 10 ft. 6 by 8 ft. 4), a coral for the baby, two
+new dresses for Mrs. Timmins, and a little rosewood desk, at the
+Pantechnicon, for which Rosa had long been sighing, with crumpled legs,
+emerald-green and gold morocco top, and drawers all over.
+
+Mrs. Timmins is a very pretty poetess (her "Lines to a Faded Tulip" and
+her "Plaint of Plinlimmon" appeared in one of last year's Keepsakes);
+and Fitzroy, as he impressed a kiss on the snowy forehead of his bride,
+pointed out to her, in one of the innumerable pockets of the desk,
+an elegant ruby-tipped pen, and six charming little gilt blank books,
+marked "My Books," which Mrs. Fitzroy might fill, he said, (he is an
+Oxford man, and very polite,) "with the delightful productions of her
+Muse." Besides these books, there was pink paper, paper with crimson
+edges, lace paper, all stamped with R. F. T. (Rosa Fitzroy Timmins)
+and the hand and battle-axe, the crest of the Timminses (and borne at
+Ascalon by Roaldus de Timmins, a crusader, who is now buried in the
+Temple Church, next to Serjeant Snooks), and yellow, pink, light-blue
+and other scented sealing waxes, at the service of Rosa when she chose
+to correspond with her friends.
+
+Rosa, you may be sure, jumped with joy at the sight of this sweet
+present; called her Charles (his first name is Samuel, but they have
+sunk that) the best of men; embraced him a great number of times, to the
+edification of her buttony little page, who stood at the landing; and as
+soon as he was gone to chambers, took the new pen and a sweet sheet of
+paper, and began to compose a poem.
+
+"What shall it be about?" was naturally her first thought. "What should
+be a young mother's first inspiration?" Her child lay on the sofa asleep
+before her; and she began in her neatest hand--
+
+                               "LINES
+
+     "ON MY SON BUNGAY DE BRACY GASHLEIGH TYMMYNS, AGED TEN MONTHS.
+
+                                                        "Tuesday.
+
+          "How beautiful! how beautiful thou seemest,
+             My boy, my precious one, my rosy babe!
+           Kind angels hover round thee, as thou dreamest:
+           Soft lashes hide thy beauteous azure eye which gleamest."
+
+"Gleamest? thine eye which gleamest? Is that grammar?" thought Rosa, who
+had puzzled her little brains for some time with this absurd question,
+when the baby woke. Then the cook came up to ask about dinner; then Mrs.
+Fundy slipped over from No. 27 (they are opposite neighbors, and made
+an acquaintance through Mrs. Fundy's macaw); and a thousand things
+happened. Finally, there was no rhyme to babe except Tippoo Saib
+(against whom Major Gashleigh, Rosa's grandfather, had distinguished
+himself), and so she gave up the little poem about her De Bracy.
+
+Nevertheless, when Fitzroy returned from chambers to take a walk with
+his wife in the Park, as he peeped through the rich tapestry hanging
+which divided the two drawing-rooms, he found his dear girl still seated
+at the desk, and writing, writing away with her ruby pen as fast as it
+could scribble.
+
+"What a genius that child has!" he said; "why, she is a second Mrs.
+Norton!" and advanced smiling to peep over her shoulder and see what
+pretty thing Rosa was composing.
+
+It was not poetry, though, that she was writing, and Fitz read as
+follows:--
+
+
+"LILLIPUT STREET, Tuesday, 22nd May.
+
+"Mr. and Mr. Fitzroy Tymmyns request the pleasure of Sir Thomas and Lady
+Kicklebury's company at dinner on Wednesday, at 7 1/2 o'clock."
+
+
+"My dear!" exclaimed the barrister, pulling a long face.
+
+"Law, Fitzroy!" cried the beloved of his bosom, "how you do startle
+one!"
+
+"Give a dinner-party with our means!" said he.
+
+"Ain't you making a fortune, you miser?" Rosa said. "Fifteen guineas a
+day is four thousand five hundred a year; I've calculated it." And, so
+saying, she rose and taking hold of his whiskers (which are as fine as
+those of any man of his circuit,) she put her mouth close up against his
+and did something to his long face, which quite changed the expression
+of it; and which the little page heard outside the door.
+
+"Our dining-room won't hold ten," he said.
+
+"We'll only ask twenty, my love. Ten are sure to refuse in this season,
+when everybody is giving parties. Look, here is the list."
+
+"Earl and Countess of Bungay, and Lady Barbara Saint Mary's."
+
+"You are dying to get a lord into the house," Timmins said (HE had
+not altered his name in Fig-tree Court yet, and therefore I am not so
+affected as to call him TYMMYNS).
+
+"Law, my dear, they are our cousins, and must be asked," Rosa said.
+
+"Let us put down my sister and Tom Crowder, then."
+
+"Blanche Crowder is really so VERY fat, Fitzroy," his wife said, "and
+our rooms are so VERY small."
+
+Fitz laughed. "You little rogue," he said, "Lady Bungay weighs two of
+Blanche, even when she's not in the f--"
+
+"Fiddlesticks!" Rose cried out. "Doctor Crowder really cannot be
+admitted: he makes such a noise eating his soup, that it is really quite
+disagreeable." And she imitated the gurgling noise performed by the
+Doctor while inhausting his soup, in such a funny way that Fitz saw
+inviting him was out of the question.
+
+"Besides, we mustn't have too many relations," Rosa went on. "Mamma,
+of course, is coming. She doesn't like to be asked in the evening; and
+she'll bring her silver bread-basket and her candlesticks, which are
+very rich and handsome."
+
+"And you complain of Blanche for being too stout!" groaned out Timmins.
+
+"Well, well, don't be in a pet," said little Rosa. "The girls won't come
+to dinner; but will bring their music afterwards." And she went on with
+the list.
+
+"Sir Thomas and Lady Kicklebury, 2. No saying no: we MUST ask
+them, Charles. They are rich people, and any room in their house in
+Brobdingnag Gardens would swallow up OUR humble cot. But to people
+in OUR position in SOCIETY they will be glad enough to come. The city
+people are glad to mix with the old families."
+
+"Very good," says Fitz, with a sad face of assent--and Mrs. Timmins went
+on reading her list.
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. Topham Sawyer, Belgravine Place."
+
+"Mrs. Sawyer hasn't asked you all the season. She gives herself the airs
+of an empress; and when--"
+
+"One's Member, you know, my dear, one must have," Rosa replied, with
+much dignity as if the presence of the representative of her native
+place would be a protection to her dinner. And a note was written
+and transported by the page early next morning to the mansion of the
+Sawyers, in Belgravine Place.
+
+
+The Topham Sawyers had just come down to breakfast; Mrs. T. in her large
+dust-colored morning-dress and Madonna front (she looks rather scraggy
+of a morning, but I promise you her ringlets and figure will stun you of
+an evening); and having read the note, the following dialogue passed:--
+
+Mrs. Topham Sawyer.--"Well, upon my word, I don't know where things will
+end. Mr. Sawyer, the Timminses have asked us to dinner."
+
+Mr. Topham Sawyer.--"Ask us to dinner! What d----- impudence!"
+
+Mrs. Topham Sawyer.--"The most dangerous and insolent revolutionary
+principles are abroad, Mr. Sawyer; and I shall write and hint as much to
+these persons."
+
+Mr. Topham Sawyer.--"No, d--- it, Joanna: they are my constituents and
+we must go. Write a civil note, and say we will come to their party."
+(He resumes the perusal of 'The times,' and Mrs. Topham Sawyer writes)--
+
+
+"MY DEAR ROSA,--We shall have GREAT PLEASURE in joining your little
+party. I do not reply in the third person, as WE ARE OLD FRIENDS, you
+know, and COUNTRY NEIGHBORS. I hope your mamma is well: present my
+KINDEST REMEMBRANCES to her, and I hope we shall see much MORE of each
+other in the summer, when we go down to the Sawpits (for going abroad is
+out of the question in these DREADFUL TIMES). With a hundred kisses to
+your dear little PET,
+
+"Believe me your attached
+
+"J. T. S."
+
+
+She said Pet, because she did not know whether Rosa's child was a
+girl or boy: and Mrs. Timmins was very much pleased with the kind and
+gracious nature of the reply to her invitation.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+The next persons whom little Mrs. Timmins was bent upon asking, were
+Mr. and Mrs. John Rowdy, of the firm of Stumpy, Rowdy and Co., of
+Brobdingnag Gardens, of the Prairie, Putney, and of Lombard Street,
+City.
+
+Mrs. Timinins and Mrs. Rowdy had been brought up at the same school
+together, and there was always a little rivalry between them, from the
+day when they contended for the French prize at school to last week,
+when each had a stall at the Fancy Fair for the benefit of the Daughters
+of Decayed Muffin-men; and when Mrs. Timmins danced against Mrs. Rowdy
+in the Scythe Mazurka at the Polish Ball, headed by Mrs. Hugh Slasher.
+Rowdy took twenty-three pounds more than Timmins in the Muffin
+transaction (for she had possession of a kettle-holder worked by the
+hands of R-y-lty, which brought crowds to her stall); but in the Mazurka
+Rosa conquered: she has the prettiest little foot possible (which in
+a red boot and silver heel looked so lovely that even the Chinese
+ambassador remarked it), whereas Mrs. Rowdy's foot is no trifle, as Lord
+Cornbury acknowledged when it came down on his lordship's boot-tip as
+they danced together amongst the Scythes.
+
+"These people are ruining themselves," said Mrs. John Rowdy to her
+husband, on receiving the pink note. It was carried round by that rogue
+of a buttony page in the evening; and he walked to Brobdingnag Gardens,
+and in the Park afterwards, with a young lady who is kitchen-maid at 27,
+and who is not more than fourteen years older than little Buttons.
+
+"These people are ruining themselves," said Mrs. John to her husband.
+"Rosa says she has asked the Bungays."
+
+"Bungays indeed! Timmins was always a tuft-hunter," said Rowdy, who had
+been at college with the barrister, and who, for his own part, has no
+more objection to a lord than you or I have; and adding, "Hang him, what
+business has HE to be giving parties?" allowed Mrs. Rowdy, nevertheless,
+to accept Rosa's invitation.
+
+"When I go to business to-morrow, I will just have a look at Mr. Fitz's
+account," Mr. Rowdy thought; "and if it is overdrawn, as it usually is,
+why . . ." The announcement of Mrs. Rowdy's brougham here put an end
+to this agreeable train of thought; and the banker and his lady stepped
+into it to join a snug little family-party of two-and-twenty, given by
+Mr. and Mrs. Secondchop at their great house on the other side of the
+Park.
+
+"Rowdys 2, Bungays 3, ourselves and mamma 3, 2 Sawyers," calculated
+little Rosa.
+
+"General Gulpin," Rosa continued, "eats a great deal, and is very
+stupid, but he looks well at table with his star and ribbon. Let us
+put HIM down!" and she noted down "Sir Thomas and Lady Gulpin, 2. Lord
+Castlemouldy, 1."
+
+"You will make your party abominably genteel and stupid," groaned
+Timmins. "Why don't you ask some of our old friends? Old Mrs. Portman
+has asked us twenty times, I am sure, within the last two years."
+
+"And the last time we went there, there was pea-soup for dinner!" Mrs.
+Timmins said, with a look of ineffable scorn.
+
+"Nobody can have been kinder than the Hodges have always been to us; and
+some sort of return we might make, I think."
+
+"Return, indeed! A pretty sound it is on the staircase to hear 'Mr. and
+Mrs. 'Odge and Miss 'Odges' pronounced by Billiter, who always leaves
+his h's out. No, no: see attorneys at your chambers, my dear--but
+what could the poor creatures do in OUR society?" And so, one by one,
+Timmins's old friends were tried and eliminated by Mrs. Timmins, just as
+if she had been an Irish Attorney-General, and they so many Catholics on
+Mr. Mitchel's jury.
+
+Mrs. Fitzroy insisted that the party should be of her very best company.
+Funnyman, the great wit, was asked, because of his jokes; and Mrs. Butt,
+on whom he practises; and Potter, who is asked because everybody else
+asks him; and Mr. Ranville Ranville of the Foreign Office, who might
+give some news of the Spanish squabble; and Botherby, who has suddenly
+sprung up into note because he is intimate with the French Revolution,
+and visits Ledru-Rollin and Lamartine. And these, with a couple more who
+are amis de la maison, made up the twenty, whom Mrs. Timmins thought she
+might safely invite to her little dinner.
+
+But the deuce of it was, that when the answers to the invitations came
+back, everybody accepted! Here was a pretty quandary. How they were to
+get twenty into their dining-room was a calculation which poor Timmins
+could not solve at all; and he paced up and down the little room in
+dismay.
+
+"Pooh!" said Rosa with a laugh. "Your sister Blanche looked very well in
+one of my dresses last year; and you know how stout she is. We will find
+some means to accommodate them all, depend upon it."
+
+Mrs. John Rowdy's note to dear Rosa, accepting the latter's invitation,
+was a very gracious and kind one; and Mrs. Fitz showed it to her husband
+when he came back from chambers. But there was another note which had
+arrived for him by this time from Mr. Rowdy--or rather from the firm;
+and to the effect that Mr. F. Timmins had overdrawn his account 28L.
+18s. 6d., and was requested to pay that sum to his obedient servants,
+Stumpy, Rowdy and Co.
+
+*****
+
+And Timmins did not like to tell his wife that the contending parties in
+the Lough Foyle and Lough Corrib Railroad had come to a settlement, and
+that the fifteen guineas a day had consequently determined. "I have had
+seven days of it, though," he thought; "and that will be enough to
+pay for the desk, the dinner, and the glasses, and make all right with
+Stumpy and Rowdy."
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+The cards for dinner having been issued, it became the duty of Mrs.
+Timmins to make further arrangements respecting the invitations to the
+tea-party which was to follow the more substantial meal.
+
+These arrangements are difficult, as any lady knows who is in the habit
+of entertaining her friends. There are--
+
+People who are offended if you ask them to tea whilst others have been
+asked to dinner;
+
+People who are offended if you ask them to tea at all; and cry out
+furiously, "Good heavens! Jane my love, why do these Timminses suppose
+that I am to leave my dinner-table to attend their ----- soiree?" (the
+dear reader may fill up the ----- to any strength, according to his
+liking)--or, "Upon my word, William my dear, it is too much to ask us to
+pay twelve shillings for a brougham, and to spend I don't know how
+much in gloves, just to make our curtsies in Mrs. Timmins's little
+drawing-room." Mrs. Moser made the latter remark about the Timmins
+affair, while the former was uttered by Mr. Grumpley, barrister-at-law,
+to his lady, in Gloucester Place.
+
+That there are people who are offended if you don't ask them at all, is
+a point which I suppose nobody will question. Timmins's earliest friend
+in life was Simmins, whose wife and family have taken a cottage at
+Mortlake for the season.
+
+"We can't ask them to come out of the country," Rosa said to her
+Fitzroy--(between ourselves, she was delighted that Mrs. Simmins was
+out of the way, and was as jealous of her as every well-regulated woman
+should be of her husband's female friends)--"we can't ask them to come
+so far for the evening."
+
+"Why, no, certainly." said Fitzroy, who has himself no very great
+opinion of a tea-party; and so the Simminses were cut out of the list.
+
+And what was the consequence? The consequence was, that Simmins and
+Timmins cut when they met at Westminster; that Mrs. Simmins sent back
+all the books which she had borrowed from Rosa, with a withering note of
+thanks; that Rosa goes about saying that Mrs. Simmins squints; that Mrs.
+S., on her side, declares that Rosa is crooked, and behaved shamefully
+to Captain Hicks in marrying Fitzroy over him, though she was forced to
+do it by her mother, and prefers the Captain to her husband to this day.
+If, in a word, these two men could be made to fight, I believe their
+wives would not be displeased; and the reason of all this misery, rage,
+and dissension, lies in a poor little twopenny dinner-party in Lilliput
+Street.
+
+Well, the guests, both for before and after meat, having been asked,
+old Mrs. Gashleigh, Rosa's mother--(and, by consequence, Fitzroy's
+DEAR mother-in-law, though I promise you that "dear" is particularly
+sarcastic)--Mrs. Gashleigh of course was sent for, and came with Miss
+Eliza Gashleigh, who plays on the guitar, and Emily, who limps a little,
+but plays sweetly on the concertina. They live close by--trust them for
+that. Your mother-in-law is always within hearing, thank our stars for
+the attention of the dear women. The Gashleighs, I say, live close by,
+and came early on the morning after Rosa's notes had been issued for the
+dinner.
+
+When Fitzroy, who was in his little study, which opens into his little
+dining-room--one of those absurd little rooms which ought to be called
+a gentleman's pantry, and is scarcely bigger than a shower-bath, or a
+state cabin in a ship--when Fitzroy heard his mother-in-law's knock,
+and her well-known scuffling and chattering in the passage--in which
+she squeezed up young Buttons, the page, while she put questions to him
+regarding baby, and the cook's health, and whether she had taken what
+Mrs. Gashleigh had sent overnight, and the housemaid's health, and
+whether Mr. Timmins had gone to chambers or not--and when, after this
+preliminary chatter, Buttons flung open the door, announcing--"Mrs.
+Gashleigh and the young ladies," Fitzroy laid down his Times newspaper
+with an expression that had best not be printed here, and took his hat
+and walked away.
+
+Mrs. Gashleigh has never liked him since he left off calling her mamma,
+and kissing her. But he said he could not stand it any longer--he was
+hanged if he would. So he went away to chambers, leaving the field clear
+to Rosa, mamma, and the two dear girls.
+
+Or to one of them, rather: for before leaving the house, he thought he
+would have a look at little Fitzroy up stairs in the nursery, and he
+found the child in the hands of his maternal aunt Eliza, who was holding
+him and pinching him as if he had been her guitar, I suppose; so that
+the little fellow bawled pitifully--and his father finally quitted the
+premises.
+
+No sooner was he gone, although the party was still a fortnight off,
+than the women pounced upon his little study, and began to put it in
+order. Some of his papers they pushed up over the bookcase, some they
+put behind the Encyclopaedia. Some they crammed into the drawers--where
+Mrs. Gashleigh found three cigars, which she pocketed, and some letters,
+over which she cast her eye; and by Fitz's return they had the room as
+neat as possible, and the best glass and dessert-service mustered on the
+study table.
+
+It was a very neat and handsome service, as you may be sure Mrs.
+Gashleigh thought, whose rich uncle had purchased it for the young
+couple, at Spode and Copeland's; but it was only for twelve persons.
+
+It was agreed that it would be, in all respects, cheaper and better to
+purchase a dozen more dessert-plates; and with "my silver basket in
+the centre," Mrs. G. said (she is always bragging about that confounded
+bread-basket), "we need not have any extra china dishes, and the table
+will look very pretty."
+
+On making a roll-call of the glass, it was calculated that at least a
+dozen or so tumblers, four or five dozen wines, eight water-bottles, and
+a proper quantity of ice-plates, were requisite; and that, as they would
+always be useful, it would be best to purchase the articles immediately.
+Fitz tumbled over the basket containing them, which stood in the hall as
+he came in from chambers, and over the boy who had brought them--and the
+little bill.
+
+The women had had a long debate, and something like a quarrel, it must
+be owned, over the bill of fare. Mrs. Gashleigh, who had lived a great
+part of her life in Devonshire, and kept house in great state there,
+was famous for making some dishes, without which, she thought, no dinner
+could be perfect. When she proposed her mock-turtle, and stewed pigeons,
+and gooseberry-cream, Rosa turned up her nose--a pretty little nose it
+was, by the way, and with a natural turn in that direction.
+
+"Mock-turtle in June, mamma!" said she.
+
+"It was good enough for your grandfather, Rosa," the mamma replied: "it
+was good enough for the Lord High Admiral, when he was at Plymouth; it
+was good enough for the first men in the county, and relished by Lord
+Fortyskewer and Lord Rolls; Sir Lawrence Porker ate twice of it after
+Exeter races; and I think it might be good enough for--"
+
+"I will NOT have it, mamma!" said Rosa, with a stamp of her foot; and
+Mrs. Gashleigh knew what resolution there was in that. Once, when she
+had tried to physic the baby, there had been a similar fight between
+them.
+
+So Mrs. Gashleigh made out a carte, in which the soup was left with
+a dash--a melancholy vacuum; and in which the pigeons were certainly
+thrust in among the entrees; but Rosa determined they never should make
+an entree at all into HER dinner-party, but that she would have the
+dinner her own way.
+
+When Fitz returned, then, and after he had paid the little bill of 6L.
+14s. 6d. for the glass, Rosa flew to him with her sweetest smiles, and
+the baby in her arms. And after she had made him remark how the child
+grew every day more and more like him, and after she had treated him to
+a number of compliments and caresses, which it were positively fulsome
+to exhibit in public, and after she had soothed him into good humor
+by her artless tenderness, she began to speak to him about some little
+points which she had at heart.
+
+She pointed out with a sigh how shabby the old curtains looked since the
+dear new glasses which her darling Fitz had given her had been put up in
+the drawing-room. Muslin curtains cost nothing, and she must and would
+have them.
+
+The muslin curtains were accorded. She and Fitz went and bought them
+at Shoolbred's, when you may be sure she treated herself likewise to
+a neat, sweet pretty half-mourning (for the Court, you know, is in
+mourning)--a neat sweet barege, or calimanco, or bombazine, or tiffany,
+or some such thing; but Madame Camille, of Regent Street, made it up,
+and Rosa looked like an angel in it on the night of her little dinner.
+
+"And, my sweet," she continued, after the curtains had been accorded,
+"mamma and I have been talking about the dinner. She wants to make
+it very expensive, which I cannot allow. I have been thinking of a
+delightful and economical plan, and you, my sweetest Fitz, must put it
+into execution."
+
+"I have cooked a mutton-chop when I was in chambers," Fitz said with a
+laugh. "Am I to put on a cap and an apron?"
+
+"No: but you are to go to the 'Megatherium Club' (where, you wretch,
+you are always going without my leave), and you are to beg Monsieur
+Mirobolant, your famous cook, to send you one of his best aides-de-camp,
+as I know he will, and with his aid we can dress the dinner and
+the confectionery at home for ALMOST NOTHING, and we can show those
+purse-proud Topham Sawyers and Rowdys that the HUMBLE COTTAGE can
+furnish forth an elegant entertainment as well as the gilded halls of
+wealth."
+
+Fitz agreed to speak to Monsieur Mirobolant. If Rosa had had a fancy
+for the cook of the Prime Minister, I believe the deluded creature of a
+husband would have asked Lord John for the loan of him.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+Fitzroy Timmins, whose taste for wine is remarkable for so young a man,
+is a member of the committee of the "Megatherium Club," and the great
+Mirobolant, good-natured as all great men are, was only too happy to
+oblige him. A young friend and protege of his, of considerable merit,
+M. Cavalcadour, happened to be disengaged through the lamented death
+of Lord Hauncher, with whom young Cavalcadour had made his debut as an
+artist. He had nothing to refuse to his master, Mirobolant, and would
+impress himself to be useful to a gourmet so distinguished as Monsieur
+Timmins. Fitz went away as pleased as Punch with this encomium of the
+great Mirobolant, and was one of those who voted against the decreasing
+of Mirobolant's salary, when the measure was proposed by Mr. Parings,
+Colonel Close, and the Screw party in the committee of the club.
+
+Faithful to the promise of his great master, the youthful Cavalcadour
+called in Lilliput Street the next day. A rich crimson velvet waistcoat,
+with buttons of blue glass and gold, a variegated blue satin stock, over
+which a graceful mosaic chain hung in glittering folds, a white hat
+worn on one side of his long curling ringlets, redolent with the most
+delightful hair-oil--one of those white hats which looks as if it had
+been just skinned--and a pair of gloves not exactly of the color of
+beurre frais, but of beurre that has been up the chimney, with a natty
+cane with a gilt knob, completed the upper part at any rate, of the
+costume of the young fellow whom the page introduced to Mrs. Timmins.
+
+Her mamma and she had been just having a dispute about the
+gooseberry-cream when Cavalcadour arrived. His presence silenced Mrs.
+Gashleigh; and Rosa, in carrying on a conversation with him in the
+French language--which she had acquired perfectly in an elegant
+finishing establishment in Kensington Square--had a great advantage
+over her mother, who could only pursue the dialogue with very much
+difficulty, eying one or other interlocutor with an alarmed and
+suspicious look, and gasping out "We" whenever she thought a proper
+opportunity arose for the use of that affirmative.
+
+"I have two leetl menus weez me," said Cavalcadour to Mrs. Gashleigh.
+
+"Minews--yes,--oh, indeed?" answered the lady.
+
+"Two little cartes."
+
+"Oh, two carts! Oh, we," she said. "Coming, I suppose?" And she looked
+out of the window to see if they were there.
+
+Cavalcadour smiled. He produced from a pocket-book a pink paper and
+a blue paper, on which he had written two bills of fare--the last two
+which he had composed for the lamented Hauncher--and he handed these
+over to Mrs. Fitzroy.
+
+The poor little woman was dreadfully puzzled with these documents, (she
+has them in her possession still,) and began to read from the pink one
+as follows:--
+
+                        "DINER POUR 16 PERSONNES.
+
+                       Potage (clair) a la Rigodon.
+                       Do. a la Prince de Tombuctou.
+
+                              Deux Poissons.
+
+            Saumon de Severne                 Rougets Gratines
+             a la Boadicee.                    a la Cleopatre.
+
+                               Deux Releves.
+
+              Le Chapeau-a-trois-cornes farci a la Robespierre.
+                        Le Tire-botte a l'Odalisque.
+
+                               Six Entrees.
+                   Saute de Hannetons a l'Epingliere.
+                     Cotelettes a la Megatherium.
+                  Bourrasque de Veau a la Palsambleu.
+            Laitances de Carpe en goguette a la Reine Pomare.
+            Turban de Volaille a l'Archeveque de Cantorbery."
+
+And so on with the entremets, and hors d'oeuvres, and the rotis, and the
+releves.
+
+"Madame will see that the dinners are quite simple," said M.
+Cavalcadour.
+
+"Oh, quite!" said Rosa, dreadfully puzzled.
+
+"Which would Madame like?"
+
+"Which would we like, mamma?" Rosa asked; adding, as if after a little
+thought, "I think, sir, we should prefer the blue one." At which Mrs.
+Gashleigh nodded as knowingly as she could; though pink or blue, I defy
+anybody to know what these cooks mean by their jargon.
+
+"If you please, Madame, we will go down below and examine the scene of
+operations," Monsieur Cavalcadour said; and so he was marshalled down
+the stairs to the kitchen, which he didn't like to name, and appeared
+before the cook in all his splendor.
+
+He cast a rapid glance round the premises, and a smile of something like
+contempt lighted up his features. "Will you bring pen and ink, if
+you please, and I will write down a few of the articles which will be
+necessary for us? We shall require, if you please, eight more stew-pans,
+a couple of braising-pans, eight saute-pans, six bainmarie-pans, a
+freezing-pot with accessories, and a few more articles of which I will
+inscribe the names." And Mr. Cavalcadour did so, dashing down, with the
+rapidity of genius, a tremendous list of ironmongery goods, which he
+handed over to Mrs. Timmins. She and her mamma were quite frightened by
+the awful catalogue.
+
+"I will call three days hence and superintend the progress of matters;
+and we will make the stock for the soup the day before the dinner."
+
+"Don't you think, sir," here interposed Mrs. Gashleigh, "that one
+soup--a fine rich mock-turtle, such as I have seen in the best houses in
+the West of England, and such as the late Lord Fortyskewer--"
+
+"You will get what is wanted for the soups, if you please," Mr.
+Cavalcadour continued, not heeding this interruption, and as bold as a
+captain on his own quarter-deck: "for the stock of clear soup, you will
+get a leg of beef, a leg of veal, and a ham."
+
+"We, munseer," said the cook, dropping a terrified curtsy: "a leg of
+beef, a leg of veal, and a ham."
+
+"You can't serve a leg of veal at a party," said Mrs. Gashleigh; "and a
+leg of beef is not a company dish."
+
+"Madame, they are to make the stock of the clear soup," Mr. Cavalcadour
+said.
+
+"WHAT!" cried Mrs. Gashleigh; and the cook repeated his former
+expression.
+
+"Never, whilst I am in this house," cried out Mrs. Gashleigh,
+indignantly; "never in a Christian ENGLISH household; never shall such
+sinful waste be permitted by ME. If you wish me to dine, Rosa, you must
+get a dinner less EXPENSIVE. The Right Honorable Lord Fortyskewer could
+dine, sir, without these wicked luxuries, and I presume my daughter's
+guests can."
+
+"Madame is perfectly at liberty to decide," said M. Cavalcadour. "I came
+to oblige Madame and my good friend Mirobolant, not myself."
+
+"Thank you, sir, I think it WILL be too expensive," Rosa stammered in a
+great flutter; "but I am very much obliged to you."
+
+"Il n'y a point d'obligation, Madame," said Monsieur Alcide Camille
+Cavalcadour in his most superb manner; and, making a splendid bow to the
+lady of the house, was respectfully conducted to the upper regions by
+little Buttons, leaving Rosa frightened, the cook amazed and silent, and
+Mrs. Gashleigh boiling with indignation against the dresser.
+
+Up to that moment, Mrs. Blowser, the cook, who had come out of
+Devonshire with Mrs. Gashleigh (of course that lady garrisoned
+her daughter's house with servants, and expected them to give her
+information of everything which took place there) up to that moment, I
+say, the cook had been quite contented with that subterraneous station
+which she occupied in life, and had a pride in keeping her kitchen neat,
+bright, and clean. It was, in her opinion, the comfortablest room in the
+house (we all thought so when we came down of a night to smoke there),
+and the handsomest kitchen in Lilliput Street.
+
+But after the visit of Cavalcadour, the cook became quite discontented
+and uneasy in her mind. She talked in a melancholy manner over the
+area-railings to the cooks at twenty-three and twenty-five. She stepped
+over the way, and conferred with the cook there. She made inquiries at
+the baker's and at other places about the kitchens in the great
+houses in Brobdingnag Gardens, and how many spits, bangmarry-pans, and
+stoo-pans they had. She thought she could not do with an occasional
+help, but must have a kitchen-maid. And she was often discovered by
+a gentleman of the police force, who was, I believe, her cousin, and
+occasionally visited her when Mrs. Gashleigh was not in the house or
+spying it:--she was discovered seated with MRS. RUNDELL in her lap,
+its leaves bespattered with her tears. "My pease be gone, Pelisse,"
+she said, "zins I zaw that ther Franchman!" And it was all the faithful
+fellow could do to console her.
+
+"---- the dinner!" said Timmins, in a rage at last. "Having it cooked
+in the house is out of the question. The bother of it, and the row your
+mother makes, are enough to drive one mad. It won't happen again, I
+can promise you, Rosa. Order it at Fubsby's, at once. You can have
+everything from Fubsby's--from footmen to saltspoons. Let's go and order
+it at Fubsby's."
+
+"Darling, if you don't mind the expense, and it will be any relief to
+you, let us do as you wish," Rosa said; and she put on her bonnet, and
+they went off to the grand cook and confectioner of the Brobdingnag
+quarter.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+On the arm of her Fitzroy, Rosa went off to Fubsby's, that magnificent
+shop at the corner of Parliament Place and Alicompayne Square,--a
+shop into which the rogue had often cast a glance of approbation as he
+passed: for there are not only the most wonderful and delicious cakes
+and confections in the window, but at the counter there are almost sure
+to be three or four of the prettiest women in the whole of this world,
+with little darling caps of the last French make, with beautiful wavy
+hair, and the neatest possible waists and aprons.
+
+Yes, there they sit; and others, perhaps, besides Fitz have cast a
+sheep's-eye through those enormous plate-glass windowpanes. I suppose it
+is the fact of perpetually living among such a quantity of good things
+that makes those young ladies so beautiful. They come into the place,
+let us say, like ordinary people, and gradually grow handsomer and
+handsomer, until they grow out into the perfect angels you see. It can't
+be otherwise: if you and I, my dear fellow, were to have a course of
+that place, we should become beautiful too. They live in an atmosphere
+of the most delicious pine-apples, blanc-manges, creams, (some whipt,
+and some so good that of course they don't want whipping,) jellies,
+tipsy-cakes, cherry-brandy--one hundred thousand sweet and lovely
+things. Look at the preserved fruits, look at the golden ginger, the
+outspreading ananas, the darling little rogues of China oranges, ranged
+in the gleaming crystal cylinders. Mon Dieu! Look at the strawberries
+in the leaves. Each of them is as large nearly as a lady's reticule, and
+looks as if it had been brought up in a nursery to itself. One of those
+strawberries is a meal for those young ladies, behind the counter; they
+nibble off a little from the side, and if they are very hungry,
+which can scarcely ever happen, they are allowed to go to the crystal
+canisters and take out a rout-cake or macaroon. In the evening they sit
+and tell each other little riddles out of the bonbons; and when they
+wish to amuse themselves, they read the most delightful remarks, in the
+French language, about Love, and Cupid, and Beauty, before they place
+them inside the crackers. They always are writing down good things into
+Mr. Fubsby's ledgers. It must be a perfect feast to read them. Talk of
+the Garden of Eden! I believe it was nothing to Mr. Fubsby's house; and
+I have no doubt that after those young ladies have been there a certain
+time, they get to such a pitch of loveliness at last, that they become
+complete angels, with wings sprouting out of their lovely shoulders,
+when (after giving just a preparatory balance or two) they fly up to the
+counter and perch there for a minute, hop down again, and affectionately
+kiss the other young ladies, and say, "Good-by, dears! We shall meet
+again la haut." And then with a whir of their deliciously scented wings,
+away they fly for good, whisking over the trees of Brobdingnag Square,
+and up into the sky, as the policeman touches his hat.
+
+It is up there that they invent the legends for the crackers, and the
+wonderful riddles and remarks on the bonbons. No mortal, I am sure,
+could write them.
+
+I never saw a man in such a state as Fitzroy Timmins in the presence of
+those ravishing houris. Mrs. Fitz having explained that they required a
+dinner for twenty persons, the chief young lady asked what Mr. and
+Mrs. Fitz would like, and named a thousand things, each better than the
+other, to all of which Fitz instantly said yes. The wretch was in such
+a state of infatuation that I believe if that lady had proposed to him a
+fricasseed elephant, or a boa-constrictor in jelly, he would have said,
+"O yes, certainly; put it down."
+
+That Peri wrote down in her album a list of things which it would make
+your mouth water to listen to. But she took it all quite calmly. Heaven
+bless you! THEY don't care about things that are no delicacies to them!
+But whatever she chose to write down, Fitzroy let her.
+
+After the dinner and dessert were ordered (at Fubsby's they furnish
+everything: dinner and dessert, plate and china, servants in your own
+livery, and, if you please, guests of title too), the married couple
+retreated from that shop of wonders; Rosa delighted that the trouble of
+the dinner was all off their hands but she was afraid it would be rather
+expensive.
+
+"Nothing can be too expensive which pleases YOU, dear," Fitz said.
+
+"By the way, one of those young women was rather good-looking," Rosa
+remarked: "the one in the cap with the blue ribbons." (And she cast
+about the shape of the cap in her mind, and determined to have exactly
+such another.)
+
+"Think so? I didn't observe," said the miserable hypocrite by her side;
+and when he had seen Rosa home, he went back, like an infamous fiend, to
+order something else which he had forgotten, he said, at Fubsby's. Get
+out of that Paradise, you cowardly, creeping, vile serpent you!
+
+Until the day of the dinner, the infatuated fop was ALWAYS going
+to Fubsby's. HE WAS REMARKED THERE. He used to go before he went to
+chambers in the morning, and sometimes on his return from the Temple:
+but the morning was the time which he preferred; and one day, when he
+went on one of his eternal pretexts, and was chattering and flirting at
+the counter, a lady who had been reading yesterday's paper and eating
+a halfpenny bun for an hour in the back shop (if that paradise may be
+called a shop)--a lady stepped forward, laid down the Morning Herald,
+and confronted him.
+
+That lady was Mrs. Gashleigh. From that day the miserable Fitzroy was in
+her power; and she resumed a sway over his house, to shake off which had
+been the object of his life, and the result of many battles. And for a
+mere freak--(for, on going into Fubsby's a week afterwards he found the
+Peris drinking tea out of blue cups, and eating stale bread and butter,
+when his absurd passion instantly vanished)--I say, for a mere freak,
+the most intolerable burden of his life was put on his shoulders
+again--his mother-in-law.
+
+On the day before the little dinner took place--and I promise you
+we shall come to it in the very next chapter--a tall and elegant
+middle-aged gentleman, who might have passed for an earl but that there
+was a slight incompleteness about his hands and feet, the former being
+uncommonly red, and the latter large and irregular, was introduced to
+Mrs. Timmins by the page, who announced him as Mr. Truncheon.
+
+"I'm Truncheon, Ma'am," he said, with a low bow.
+
+"Indeed!" said Rosa.
+
+"About the dinner M'm, from Fubsby's, M'm. As you have no butler, M'm,
+I presume you will wish me to act as sich. I shall bring two persons
+as haids to-morrow; both answers to the name of John. I'd best, if you
+please, inspect the premisis, and will think you to allow your young man
+to show me the pantry and kitching."
+
+Truncheon spoke in a low voice, and with the deepest and most respectful
+melancholy. There is not much expression in his eyes, but from what
+there is, you would fancy that he was oppressed by a secret sorrow. Rosa
+trembled as she surveyed this gentleman's size, his splendid appearance,
+and gravity. "I am sure," she said, "I never shall dare to ask him
+to hand a glass of water." Even Mrs. Gashleigh, when she came on the
+morning of the actual dinner-party, to superintend matters, was cowed,
+and retreated from the kitchen before the calm majesty of Truncheon.
+
+And yet that great man was, like all the truly great--affable.
+
+He put aside his coat and waistcoat (both of evening cut, and looking
+prematurely splendid as he walked the streets in noonday), and did not
+disdain to rub the glasses and polish the decanters, and to show young
+Buttons the proper mode of preparing these articles for a dinner. And
+while he operated, the maids, and Buttons, and cook, when she could--and
+what had she but the vegetables to boil?--crowded round him, and
+listened with wonder as he talked of the great families as he had lived
+with. That man, as they saw him there before them, had been cab-boy
+to Lord Tantallan, valet to the Earl of Bareacres, and groom of the
+chambers to the Duchess Dowager of Fitzbattleaxe. Oh, it was delightful
+to hear Mr. Truncheon!
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+On the great, momentous, stupendous day of the dinner, my beloved female
+reader may imagine that Fitzroy Timmins was sent about his business at
+an early hour in the morning, while the women began to make preparations
+to receive their guests. "There will be no need of your going to
+Fubsby's," Mrs. Gashleigh said to him, with a look that drove him out
+of doors. "Everything that we require has been ordered THERE! You will
+please to be back here at six o'clock, and not sooner: and I presume you
+will acquiesce in my arrangements about the WINE?"
+
+"O yes, mamma," said the prostrate son-in-law.
+
+"In so large a party--a party beyond some folks MEANS--expensive WINES
+are ABSURD. The light sherry at 26s., the champagne at 42s.; and you are
+not to go beyond 36s. for the claret and port after dinner. Mind, coffee
+will be served; and you come up stairs after two rounds of the claret."
+
+"Of course, of course," acquiesced the wretch; and hurried out of the
+house to his chambers, and to discharge the commissions with which the
+womankind had intrusted him.
+
+As for Mrs. Gashleigh, you might have heard her bawling over the house
+the whole day long. That admirable woman was everywhere: in the kitchen
+until the arrival of Truncheon, before whom she would not retreat
+without a battle; on the stairs; in Fitzroy's dressing-room; and in
+Fitzroy minor's nursery, to whom she gave a dose of her own composition,
+while the nurse was sent out on a pretext to make purchases of garnish
+for the dishes to be served for the little dinner. Garnish for the
+dishes! As if the folks at Fubsby's could not garnish dishes better than
+Gashleigh, with her stupid old-world devices of laurel-leaves, parsley,
+and cut turnips! Why, there was not a dish served that day that was not
+covered over with skewers, on which truffles, crayfish, mushrooms,
+and forced-meat were impaled. When old Gashleigh went down with her
+barbarian bunches of holly and greens to stick about the meats, even the
+cook saw their incongruity, and, at Truncheon's orders, flung the whole
+shrubbery into the dust-house, where, while poking about the premises,
+you may be sure Mrs. G. saw it.
+
+Every candle which was to be burned that night (including the tallow
+candle, which she said was a good enough bed-light for Fitzroy)
+she stuck into the candlesticks with her own hands, giving her own
+high-shouldered plated candlesticks of the year 1798 the place of honor.
+She upset all poor Rosa's floral arrangements, turning the nosegays
+from one vase into the other without any pity, and was never tired of
+beating, and pushing, and patting, and WHAPPING the curtain and sofa
+draperies into shape in the little drawing-room.
+
+In Fitz's own apartments she revelled with peculiar pleasure. It has
+been described how she had sacked his study and pushed away his papers,
+some of which, including three cigars, and the commencement of an
+article for the Law Magazine, "Lives of the Sheriffs' Officers," he has
+never been able to find to this day. Mamma now went into the little room
+in the back regions, which is Fitz's dressing-room, (and was destined to
+be a cloak-room,) and here she rummaged to her heart's delight.
+
+In an incredibly short space of time she examined all his outlying
+pockets, drawers, and letters; she inspected his socks and
+handkerchiefs in the top drawers; and on the dressing-table, his
+razors, shaving-strop, and hair-oil. She carried off his silver-topped
+scent-bottle out of his dressing-case, and a half-dozen of his favorite
+pills (which Fitz possesses in common with every well-regulated man),
+and probably administered them to her own family. His boots, glossy
+pumps, and slippers she pushed into the shower-bath, where the poor
+fellow stepped into them the next morning, in the midst of a pool in
+which they were lying. The baby was found sucking his boot-hooks the
+next day in the nursery; and as for the bottle of varnish for his shoes,
+(which he generally paints upon the trees himself, having a pretty taste
+in that way,) it could never be found to the present hour but it was
+remarked that the young Master Gashleighs, when they came home for the
+holidays, always wore lacquered highlows; and the reader may draw his
+conclusions from THAT fact.
+
+In the course of the day all the servants gave Mrs. Timmins warning.
+
+The cook said she coodn't abear it no longer, 'aving Mrs. G. always
+about her kitching, with her fingers in all the saucepans. Mrs. G. had
+got her the place, but she preferred one as Mrs. G. didn't get for her.
+
+The nurse said she was come to nuss Master Fitzroy, and knew her duty;
+his grandmamma wasn't his nuss, and was always aggrawating her,--missus
+must shoot herself elsewhere.
+
+The housemaid gave utterance to the same sentiments in language more
+violent.
+
+Little Buttons bounced up to his mistress, said he was butler of the
+family, Mrs. G. was always poking about his pantry, and dam if he'd
+stand it.
+
+At every moment Rosa grew more and more bewildered. The baby howled a
+great deal during the day. His large china christening-bowl was cracked
+by Mrs. Gashleigh altering the flowers in it, and pretending to be very
+cool, whilst her hands shook with rage.
+
+"Pray go on, mamma," Rosa said with tears in her eyes. "Should you like
+to break the chandelier?"
+
+"Ungrateful, unnatural child!" bellowed the other. "Only that I know you
+couldn't do without me, I'd leave the house this minute."
+
+"As you wish," said Rosa; but Mrs. G. DIDN'T wish: and in this juncture
+Truncheon arrived.
+
+That officer surveyed the dining-room, laid the cloth there with
+admirable precision and neatness; ranged the plate on the sideboard with
+graceful accuracy, but objected to that old thing in the centre, as he
+called Mrs. Gashleigh's silver basket, as cumbrous and useless for the
+table, where they would want all the room they could get.
+
+Order was not restored to the house, nor, indeed, any decent progress
+made, until this great man came: but where there was a revolt before,
+and a general disposition to strike work and to yell out defiance
+against Mrs. Gashleigh, who was sitting bewildered and furious in the
+drawing-room--where there was before commotion, at the appearance of the
+master-spirit, all was peace and unanimity: the cook went back to her
+pans, the housemaid busied herself with the china and glass, cleaning
+some articles and breaking others, Buttons sprang up and down the
+stairs, obedient to the orders of his chief, and all things went well
+and in their season.
+
+At six, the man with the wine came from Binney and Latham's. At a
+quarter past six, Timmins himself arrived.
+
+At half past six he might have been heard shouting out for his varnished
+boots but we know where THOSE had been hidden--and for his dressing
+things; but Mrs. Gashleigh had put them away.
+
+As in his vain inquiries for these articles he stood shouting, "Nurse!
+Buttons! Rosa my dear!" and the most fearful execrations up and down the
+stairs, Mr. Truncheon came out on him.
+
+"Egscuse me, sir," says he, "but it's impawsable. We can't dine twenty
+at that table--not if you set 'em out awinder, we can't."
+
+"What's to be done?" asked Fitzroy, in an agony; "they've all said
+they'd come."
+
+"Can't do it," said the other; "with two top and bottom--and your table
+is as narrow as a bench--we can't hold more than heighteen, and then
+each person's helbows will be into his neighbor's cheer."
+
+"Rosa! Mrs. Gashleigh!" cried out Timmins, "come down and speak to this
+gentl--this--"
+
+"Truncheon, sir," said the man.
+
+The women descended from the drawing-room. "Look and see, ladies," he
+said, inducting them into the dining-room: "there's the room, there's
+the table laid for heighteen, and I defy you to squeege in more."
+
+"One person in a party always fails," said Mrs. Gashleigh, getting
+alarmed.
+
+"That's nineteen," Mr. Truncheon remarked. "We must knock another hoff,
+Ma'm." And he looked her hard in the face.
+
+Mrs. Gashleigh was very red and nervous, and paced, or rather squeezed
+round the table (it was as much as she could do). The chairs could not
+be put any closer than they were. It was impossible, unless the convive
+sat as a centre-piece in the middle, to put another guest at that table.
+
+"Look at that lady movin' round, sir. You see now the difficklty. If
+my men wasn't thinner, they couldn't hoperate at all," Mr. Truncheon
+observed, who seemed to have a spite to Mrs. Gashleigh.
+
+"What is to be done?" she said, with purple accents.
+
+"My dearest mamma," Rosa cried out, "you must stop at home--how sorry I
+am!" And she shot one glance at Fitzroy, who shot another at the great
+Truncheon, who held down his eyes. "We could manage with heighteen," he
+said, mildly.
+
+Mrs. Gashleigh gave a hideous laugh.
+
+*****
+
+She went away. At eight o'clock she was pacing at the corner of the
+street, and actually saw the company arrive. First came the Topham
+Sawyers, in their light-blue carriage with the white hammercloth and
+blue and white ribbons--their footmen drove the house down with the
+knocking.
+
+Then followed the ponderous and snuff-colored vehicle, with faded gilt
+wheels and brass earl's coronets all over it, the conveyance of the
+House of Bungay. The Countess of Bungay and daughter stepped out of the
+carriage. The fourteenth Earl of Bungay couldn't come.
+
+Sir Thomas and Lady Gulpin's fly made its appearance, from which issued
+the General with his star, and Lady Gulpin in yellow satin. The Rowdys'
+brougham followed next; after which Mrs. Butt's handsome equipage drove
+up.
+
+The two friends of the house, young gentlemen from the Temple, now
+arrived in cab No. 9996. We tossed up, in fact, which should pay the
+fare.
+
+Mr. Ranville Ranville walked, and was dusting his boots as the Templars
+drove up. Lord Castlemouldy came out of a twopenny omnibus. Funnyman,
+the wag, came last, whirling up rapidly in a hansom, just as Mrs.
+Gashleigh, with rage in her heart, was counting that two people had
+failed, and that there were only seventeen after all.
+
+Mr. Truncheon passed our names to Mr. Billiter, who bawled them out on
+the stairs. Rosa was smiling in a pink dress, and looking as fresh as
+an angel, and received her company with that grace which has always
+characterized her.
+
+The moment of the dinner arrived, old Lady Bungay scuffled off on
+the arm of Fitzroy, while the rear was brought up by Rosa and Lord
+Castlemouldy, of Ballyshanvanvoght Castle, co, Tipperary. Some fellows
+who had the luck took down ladies to dinner. I was not sorry to be out
+of the way of Mrs. Rowdy, with her dandified airs, or of that high and
+mighty county princess, Mrs. Topham Sawyer.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+Of course it does not become the present writer, who has partaken of the
+best entertainment which his friends could supply, to make fun of their
+(somewhat ostentatious, as it must be confessed) hospitality. If they
+gave a dinner beyond their means, it is no business of mine. I hate a
+man who goes and eats a friend's meat, and then blabs the secrets of
+the mahogany. Such a man deserves never to be asked to dinner again; and
+though at the close of a London season that seems no great loss, and
+you sicken of a whitebait as you would of a whale--yet we must always
+remember that there's another season coming, and hold our tongues for
+the present.
+
+As for describing, then, the mere victuals on Timmins's table, that
+would be absurd. Everybody--(I mean of the genteel world of course, of
+which I make no doubt the reader is a polite ornament)--Everybody has
+the same everything in London. You see the same coats, the same dinners,
+the same boiled fowls and mutton, the same cutlets, fish, and
+cucumbers, the same lumps of Wenham Lake ice, &c. The waiters with white
+neck-cloths are as like each other everywhere as the peas which they
+hand round with the ducks of the second course. Can't any one invent
+anything new?
+
+The only difference between Timmins's dinner and his neighbor's was,
+that he had hired, as we have said, the greater part of the plate, and
+that his cowardly conscience magnified faults and disasters of which no
+one else probably took heed.
+
+But Rosa thought, from the supercilious air with which Mrs. Topham
+Sawyer was eying the plate and other arrangements, that she was
+remarking the difference of the ciphers on the forks and spoons--which
+had, in fact, been borrowed from every one of Fitzroy's friends--(I
+know, for instance, that he had my six, among others, and only returned
+five, along with a battered old black-pronged plated abomination, which
+I have no doubt belongs to Mrs. Gashleigh, whom I hereby request to send
+back mine in exchange)--their guilty consciences, I say, made them fancy
+that every one was spying out their domestic deficiencies: whereas, it
+is probable that nobody present thought of their failings at all. People
+never do: they never see holes in their neighbors' coats--they are too
+indolent, simple, and charitable.
+
+Some things, however, one could not help remarking: for instance, though
+Fitz is my closest friend, yet could I avoid seeing and being amused by
+his perplexity and his dismal efforts to be facetious? His eye wandered
+all round the little room with quick uneasy glances, very different from
+those frank and jovial looks with which he is accustomed to welcome you
+to a leg of mutton; and Rosa, from the other end of the table, and
+over the flowers, entree dishes, and wine-coolers, telegraphed him with
+signals of corresponding alarm. Poor devils! why did they ever go beyond
+that leg of mutton?
+
+Funnyman was not brilliant in conversation, scarcely opening his mouth,
+except for the purposes of feasting. The fact is, our friend Tom Dawson
+was at table, who knew all his stories, and in his presence the greatest
+wag is always silent and uneasy.
+
+Fitz has a very pretty wit of his own, and a good reputation on circuit;
+but he is timid before great people. And indeed the presence of that
+awful Lady Bungay on his right hand was enough to damp him. She was in
+court mourning (for the late Prince of Schlippenschloppen). She had on a
+large black funereal turban and appurtenances, and a vast breastplate of
+twinkling, twiddling black bugles. No wonder a man could not be gay in
+talking to HER.
+
+Mrs. Rowdy and Mrs. Topham Sawyer love each other as women do who have
+the same receiving nights, and ask the same society; they were only
+separated by Ranville Ranville, who tries to be well with both and they
+talked at each other across him.
+
+Topham and Rowdy growled out a conversation about Rum, Ireland, and the
+Navigation Laws, quite unfit for print. Sawyer never speaks three words
+without mentioning the House and the Speaker.
+
+The Irish Peer said nothing (which was a comfort) but he ate and drank
+of everything which came in his way; and cut his usual absurd figure in
+dyed whiskers and a yellow under-waistcoat.
+
+General Gulpin sported his star, and looked fat and florid, but
+melancholy. His wife ordered away his dinner, just like honest Sancho's
+physician at Barataria.
+
+Botherby's stories about Lamartine are as old as the hills, since the
+barricades of 1848; and he could not get in a word or cut the slightest
+figure. And as for Tom Dawson, he was carrying on an undertoned
+small-talk with Lady Barbara St. Mary's, so that there was not much
+conversation worth record going on WITHIN the dining-room.
+
+Outside it was different. Those houses in Lilliput Street are so
+uncommonly compact, that you can hear everything which takes place all
+over the tenement; and so--
+
+In the awful pauses of the banquet, and the hall-door being furthermore
+open, we had the benefit of hearing:
+
+The cook, and the occasional cook, below stairs, exchanging rapid
+phrases regarding the dinner;
+
+The smash of the soup-tureen, and swift descent of the kitchen-maid and
+soup-ladle down the stairs to the lower regions. This accident created a
+laugh, and rather amused Fitzroy and the company, and caused Funnyman
+to say, bowing to Rosa, that she was mistress of herself, though
+China fall. But she did not heed him, for at that moment another noise
+commenced, namely, that of--
+
+The baby in the upper rooms, who commenced a series of piercing yells,
+which, though stopped by the sudden clapping to of the nursery-door,
+were only more dreadful to the mother when suppressed. She would
+have given a guinea to go up stairs and have done with the whole
+entertainment.
+
+A thundering knock came at the door very early after the dessert, and
+the poor soul took a speedy opportunity of summoning the ladies to
+depart, though you may be sure it was only old Mrs. Gashleigh, who had
+come with her daughters--of course the first person to come. I saw her
+red gown whisking up the stairs, which were covered with plates and
+dishes, over which she trampled.
+
+Instead of having any quiet after the retreat of the ladies, the house
+was kept in a rattle, and the glasses jingled on the table as the flymen
+and coachmen plied the knocker, and the soiree came in. From my place
+I could see everything: the guests as they arrived (I remarked very few
+carriages, mostly cabs and flies), and a little crowd of blackguard boys
+and children, who were formed round the door, and gave ironical cheers
+to the folks as they stepped out of their vehicles.
+
+As for the evening-party, if a crowd in the dog-days is pleasant, poor
+Mrs. Timmins certainly had a successful soiree. You could hardly move
+on the stair. Mrs. Sternhold broke in the banisters, and nearly fell
+through. There was such a noise and chatter you could not hear the
+singing of the Miss Gashleighs, which was no great loss. Lady Bungay
+could hardly get to her carriage, being entangled with Colonel Wedgewood
+in the passage. An absurd attempt was made to get up a dance of some
+kind; but before Mrs. Crowder had got round the room, the hanging-lamp
+in the dining-room below was stove in, and fell with a crash on the
+table, now prepared for refreshment.
+
+Why, in fact, did the Timminses give that party at all? It was quite
+beyond their means. They have offended a score of their old friends,
+and pleased none of their acquaintances. So angry were many who were not
+asked, that poor Rosa says she must now give a couple more parties
+and take in those not previously invited. And I know for a fact
+that Fubsby's bill is not yet paid; nor Binney and Latham's the
+wine-merchants; that the breakage and hire of glass and china cost ever
+so much money; that every true friend of Timmins has cried out against
+his absurd extravagance, and that now, when every one is going out of
+town, Fitz has hardly money to pay his circuit, much more to take Rosa
+to a watering-place, as he wished and promised.
+
+As for Mrs. Gashleigh, the only feasible plan of economy which she
+can suggest, is that she could come and live with her daughter and
+son-in-law, and that they should keep house together. If he agrees to
+this, she has a little sum at the banker's, with which she would not
+mind easing his present difficulties; and the poor wretch is so utterly
+bewildered and crestfallen that it is very likely he will become her
+victim.
+
+The Topham Sawyers, when they go down into the country, will represent
+Fitz as a ruined man and reckless prodigal; his uncle, the attorney,
+from whom he has expectations, will most likely withdraw his business,
+and adopt some other member of his family--Blanche Crowder for instance,
+whose husband, the doctor, has had high words with poor Fitzroy already,
+of course at the women's instigation. And all these accumulated miseries
+fall upon the unfortunate wretch because he was good-natured, and his
+wife would have a Little Dinner.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Little Dinner at Timmins's, by 
+William Makepeace Thackeray
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+*Project Gutenberg's A Little Dinner at Timmins's, by Thackeray*
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+Title:  A Little Dinner at Timmins's
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+Author:  William Makepeace Thackeray
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+
+
+A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S.
+
+by William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Fitzroy Timmins live in Lilliput Street, that neat
+little street which runs at right angles with the Park and
+Brobdingnag Gardens.  It is a very genteel neighborhood, and I need
+not say they are of a good family.
+
+Especially Mrs. Timmins, as her mamma is always telling Mr. T.
+They are Suffolk people, and distantly related to the Right
+honorable the Earl of Bungay.
+
+Besides his house in Lilliput Street, Mr. Timmins has chambers in
+Fig-tree Court, Temple, and goes the Northern Circuit.
+
+The other day, when there was a slight difference about the payment
+of fees between the great Parliamentary Counsel and the Solicitors,
+Stoke and Pogers, of Great George Street, sent the papers of the
+Lough Foyle and Lough Corrib Junction Railway to Mr. Fitzroy
+Timmins, who was so elated that he instantly purchased a couple of
+looking-glasses for his drawing-rooms (the front room is 16 by 12,
+and the back, a tight but elegant apartment, 10 ft. 6 by 8 ft. 4),
+a coral for the baby, two new dresses for Mrs. Timmins, and a
+little rosewood desk, at the Pantechnicon, for which Rosa had long
+been sighing, with crumpled legs, emerald-green and gold morocco
+top, and drawers all over.
+
+Mrs. Timmins is a very pretty poetess (her "Lines to a Faded Tulip"
+and her "Plaint of Plinlimmon" appeared in one of last year's
+Keepsakes); and Fitzroy, as he impressed a kiss on the snowy
+forehead of his bride, pointed out to her, in one of the
+innumerable pockets of the desk, an elegant ruby-tipped pen, and
+six charming little gilt blank books, marked "My Books," which Mrs.
+Fitzroy might fill, he said, (he is an Oxford man, and very
+polite,) "with the delightful productions of her Muse."  Besides
+these books, there was pink paper, paper with crimson edges, lace
+paper, all stamped with R. F. T. (Rosa Fitzroy Timmins) and the
+hand and battle-axe, the crest of the Timminses (and borne at
+Ascalon by Roaldus de Timmins, a crusader, who is now buried in the
+Temple Church, next to Serjeant Snooks), and yellow, pink, light-
+blue and other scented sealing waxes, at the service of Rosa when
+she chose to correspond with her friends.
+
+Rosa, you may be sure, jumped with joy at the sight of this sweet
+present; called her Charles (his first name is Samuel, but they
+have sunk that) the best of men; embraced him a great number of
+times, to the edification of her buttony little page, who stood at
+the landing; and as soon as he was gone to chambers, took the new
+pen and a sweet sheet of paper, and began to compose a poem.
+
+"What shall it be about?" was naturally her first thought.  "What
+should be a young mother's first inspiration?"  Her child lay on
+the sofa asleep before her; and she began in her neatest hand--
+
+
+                          "LINES
+
+"ON MY SON BUNGAY DE BRACY GASHLEIGH TYMMYNS, AGED TEN MONTHS.
+
+                                                   "Tuesday.
+
+     "How beautiful! how beautiful thou seemest,
+        My boy, my precious one, my rosy babe!
+      Kind angels hover round thee, as thou dreamest:
+      Soft lashes hide thy beauteous azure eye which gleamest."
+
+
+"Gleamest? thine eye which gleamest?  Is that grammar?" thought
+Rosa, who had puzzled her little brains for some time with this
+absurd question, when the baby woke.  Then the cook came up to ask
+about dinner; then Mrs. Fundy slipped over from No. 27 (they are
+opposite neighbors, and made an acquaintance through Mrs. Fundy's
+macaw); and a thousand things happened.  Finally, there was no
+rhyme to babe except Tippoo Saib (against whom Major Gashleigh,
+Rosa's grandfather, had distinguished himself), and so she gave up
+the little poem about her De Bracy.
+
+Nevertheless, when Fitzroy returned from chambers to take a walk
+with his wife in the Park, as he peeped through the rich tapestry
+hanging which divided the two drawing-rooms, he found his dear girl
+still seated at the desk, and writing, writing away with her ruby
+pen as fast as it could scribble.
+
+"What a genius that child has!" he said; "why, she is a second Mrs.
+Norton!" and advanced smiling to peep over her shoulder and see
+what pretty thing Rosa was composing.
+
+It was not poetry, though, that she was writing, and Fitz read as
+follows:--
+
+
+                            "LILLIPUT STREET, Tuesday, 22nd May.
+
+"Mr. and Mr. Fitzroy Tymmyns request the pleasure of Sir Thomas and
+Lady Kicklebury's company at dinner on Wednesday, at 7 1/2 o'clock."
+
+
+"My dear!" exclaimed the barrister, pulling a long face.
+
+"Law, Fitzroy!" cried the beloved of his bosom, "how you do startle
+one!"
+
+"Give a dinner-party with our means!" said he.
+
+"Ain't you making a fortune, you miser?" Rosa said.  "Fifteen
+guineas a day is four thousand five hundred a year; I've calculated
+it."  And, so saying, she rose and taking hold of his whiskers
+(which are as fine as those of any man of his circuit,) she put her
+mouth close up against his and did something to his long face,
+which quite changed the expression of it; and which the little page
+heard outside the door.
+
+"Our dining-room won't hold ten," he said.
+
+"We'll only ask twenty, my love.  Ten are sure to refuse in this
+season, when everybody is giving parties.  Look, here is the list."
+
+"Earl and Countess of Bungay, and Lady Barbara Saint Mary's."
+
+"You are dying to get a lord into the house," Timmins said (HE had
+not altered his name in Fig-tree Court yet, and therefore I am not
+so affected as to call him TYMMYNS).
+
+"Law, my dear, they are our cousins, and must be asked," Rosa said.
+
+"Let us put down my sister and Tom Crowder, then."
+
+"Blanche Crowder is really so VERY fat, Fitzroy," his wife said,
+"and our rooms are so VERY small."
+
+Fitz laughed.  "You little rogue," he said, "Lady Bungay weighs two
+of Blanche, even when she's not in the f--"
+
+"Fiddlesticks!" Rose cried out.  "Doctor Crowder really cannot be
+admitted: he makes such a noise eating his soup, that it is really
+quite disagreeable."  And she imitated the gurgling noise performed
+by the Doctor while inhausting his soup, in such a funny way that
+Fitz saw inviting him was out of the question.
+
+"Besides, we mustn't have too many relations," Rosa went on.
+"Mamma, of course, is coming.  She doesn't like to be asked in the
+evening; and she'll bring her silver bread-basket and her
+candlesticks, which are very rich and handsome."
+
+"And you complain of Blanche for being too stout!" groaned out
+Timmins.
+
+"Well, well, don't be in a pet," said little Rosa.  "The girls
+won't come to dinner; but will bring their music afterwards."  And
+she went on with the list.
+
+"Sir Thomas and Lady Kicklebury, 2.  No saying no: we MUST ask
+them, Charles.  They are rich people, and any room in their house
+in Brobdingnag Gardens would swallow up OUR humble cot.  But to
+people in OUR position in SOCIETY they will be glad enough to come.
+The city people are glad to mix with the old families."
+
+"Very good," says Fitz, with a sad face of assent--and Mrs. Timmins
+went on reading her list.
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. Topham Sawyer, Belgravine Place."
+
+"Mrs. Sawyer hasn't asked you all the season.  She gives herself
+the airs of an empress; and when--"
+
+"One's Member, you know, my dear, one must have," Rosa replied,
+with much dignity as if the presence of the representative of her
+native place would be a protection to her dinner.  And a note was
+written and transported by the page early next morning to the
+mansion of the Sawyers, in Belgravine Place.
+
+
+The Topham Sawyers had just come down to breakfast; Mrs. T. in her
+large dust-colored morning-dress and Madonna front (she looks
+rather scraggy of a morning, but I promise you her ringlets and
+figure will stun you of an evening); and having read the note, the
+following dialogue passed:--
+
+Mrs. Topham Sawyer.--"Well, upon my word, I don't know where things
+will end.  Mr. Sawyer, the Timminses have asked us to dinner."
+
+Mr. Topham Sawyer.--"Ask us to dinner!  What d----- impudence!"
+
+Mrs. Topham Sawyer.--"The most dangerous and insolent revolutionary
+principles are abroad, Mr. Sawyer; and I shall write and hint as
+much to these persons."
+
+Mr. Topham Sawyer.--"No, d--- it, Joanna: they are my constituents
+and we must go.  Write a civil note, and say we will come to their
+party."  (He resumes the perusal of 'The times,' and Mrs. Topham
+Sawyer writes)--
+
+
+"MY DEAR ROSA,--We shall have GREAT PLEASURE in joining your little
+party.  I do not reply in the third person, as WE ARE OLD FRIENDS,
+you know, and COUNTRY NEIGHBORS.  I hope your mamma is well:
+present my KINDEST REMEMBRANCES to her, and I hope we shall see
+much MORE of each other in the summer, when we go down to the
+Sawpits (for going abroad is out of the question in these DREADFUL
+TIMES).  With a hundred kisses to your dear little PET,
+
+                         "Believe me your attached
+
+                                                   "J. T. S."
+
+
+She said Pet, because she did not know whether Rosa's child was a
+girl or boy: and Mrs. Timmins was very much pleased with the kind
+and gracious nature of the reply to her invitation.
+
+
+II.
+
+
+The next persons whom little Mrs. Timmins was bent upon asking,
+were Mr. and Mrs. John Rowdy, of the firm of Stumpy, Rowdy and Co.,
+of Brobdingnag Gardens, of the Prairie, Putney, and of Lombard
+Street, City.
+
+Mrs. Timinins and Mrs. Rowdy had been brought up at the same school
+together, and there was always a little rivalry between them, from
+the day when they contended for the French prize at school to last
+week, when each had a stall at the Fancy Fair for the benefit of
+the Daughters of Decayed Muffin-men; and when Mrs. Timmins danced
+against Mrs. Rowdy in the Scythe Mazurka at the Polish Ball, headed
+by Mrs. Hugh Slasher.  Rowdy took twenty-three pounds more than
+Timmins in the Muffin transaction (for she had possession of a
+kettle-holder worked by the hands of R-y-lty, which brought crowds
+to her stall); but in the Mazurka Rosa conquered: she has the
+prettiest little foot possible (which in a red boot and silver heel
+looked so lovely that even the Chinese ambassador remarked it),
+whereas Mrs. Rowdy's foot is no trifle, as Lord Cornbury
+acknowledged when it came down on his lordship's boot-tip as they
+danced together amongst the Scythes.
+
+"These people are ruining themselves," said Mrs. John Rowdy to her
+husband, on receiving the pink note.  It was carried round by that
+rogue of a buttony page in the evening; and he walked to
+Brobdingnag Gardens, and in the Park afterwards, with a young lady
+who is kitchen-maid at 27, and who is not more than fourteen years
+older than little Buttons.
+
+"These people are ruining themselves," said Mrs. John to her
+husband.  "Rosa says she has asked the Bungays."
+
+"Bungays indeed!  Timmins was always a tuft-hunter," said Rowdy,
+who had been at college with the barrister, and who, for his own
+part, has no more objection to a lord than you or I have; and
+adding, "Hang him, what business has HE to be giving parties?"
+allowed Mrs. Rowdy, nevertheless, to accept Rosa's invitation.
+
+"When I go to business to-morrow, I will just have a look at Mr.
+Fitz's account," Mr. Rowdy thought; "and if it is overdrawn, as it
+usually is, why . . ."  The announcement of Mrs. Rowdy's brougham
+here put an end to this agreeable train of thought; and the banker
+and his lady stepped into it to join a snug little family-party of
+two-and-twenty, given by Mr. and Mrs. Secondchop at their great
+house on the other side of the Park.
+
+"Rowdys 2, Bungays 3, ourselves and mamma 3, 2 Sawyers," calculated
+little Rosa.
+
+"General Gulpin," Rosa continued, "eats a great deal, and is very
+stupid, but he looks well at table with his star and ribbon.  Let
+us put HIM down!" and she noted down "Sir Thomas and Lady Gulpin,
+2.  Lord Castlemouldy, 1."
+
+"You will make your party abominably genteel and stupid," groaned
+Timmins.  "Why don't you ask some of our old friends?  Old Mrs.
+Portman has asked us twenty times, I am sure, within the last two
+years."
+
+"And the last time we went there, there was pea-soup for dinner!"
+Mrs. Timmins said, with a look of ineffable scorn.
+
+"Nobody can have been kinder than the Hodges have always been to
+us; and some sort of return we might make, I think."
+
+"Return, indeed!  A pretty sound it is on the staircase to hear
+'Mr. and Mrs. 'Odge and Miss 'Odges' pronounced by Billiter, who
+always leaves his h's out.  No, no: see attorneys at your chambers,
+my dear--but what could the poor creatures do in OUR society?"  And
+so, one by one, Timmins's old friends were tried and eliminated by
+Mrs. Timmins, just as if she had been an Irish Attorney-General,
+and they so many Catholics on Mr. Mitchel's jury.
+
+Mrs. Fitzroy insisted that the party should be of her very best
+company.  Funnyman, the great wit, was asked, because of his jokes;
+and Mrs. Butt, on whom he practises; and Potter, who is asked
+because everybody else asks him; and Mr. Ranville Ranville of the
+Foreign Office, who might give some news of the Spanish squabble;
+and Botherby, who has suddenly sprung up into note because he is
+intimate with the French Revolution, and visits Ledru-Rollin and
+Lamartine.  And these, with a couple more who are amis de la
+maison, made up the twenty, whom Mrs. Timmins thought she might
+safely invite to her little dinner.
+
+But the deuce of it was, that when the answers to the invitations
+came back, everybody accepted!  Here was a pretty quandary.  How
+they were to get twenty into their dining-room was a calculation
+which poor Timmins could not solve at all; and he paced up and down
+the little room in dismay.
+
+"Pooh!" said Rosa with a laugh.  "Your sister Blanche looked very
+well in one of my dresses last year; and you know how stout she is.
+We will find some means to accommodate them all, depend upon it."
+
+Mrs. John Rowdy's note to dear Rosa, accepting the latter's
+invitation, was a very gracious and kind one; and Mrs. Fitz showed
+it to her husband when he came back from chambers.  But there was
+another note which had arrived for him by this time from Mr. Rowdy--
+or rather from the firm; and to the effect that Mr. F. Timmins had
+overdrawn his account 28L. 18s. 6d., and was requested to pay that
+sum to his obedient servants, Stumpy, Rowdy and Co.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+And Timmins did not like to tell his wife that the contending
+parties in the Lough Foyle and Lough Corrib Railroad had come to a
+settlement, and that the fifteen guineas a day had consequently
+determined.  "I have had seven days of it, though," he thought;
+"and that will be enough to pay for the desk, the dinner, and the
+glasses, and make all right with Stumpy and Rowdy."
+
+
+III.
+
+
+The cards for dinner having been issued, it became the duty of Mrs.
+Timmins to make further arrangements respecting the invitations to
+the tea-party which was to follow the more substantial meal.
+
+These arrangements are difficult, as any lady knows who is in the
+habit of entertaining her friends.  There are--
+
+People who are offended if you ask them to tea whilst others have
+been asked to dinner;
+
+People who are offended if you ask them to tea at all; and cry out
+furiously, "Good heavens! Jane my love, why do these Timminses
+suppose that I am to leave my dinner-table to attend their -----
+soiree?" (the dear reader may fill up the ----- to any strength,
+according to his liking)--or, "Upon my word, William my dear, it is
+too much to ask us to pay twelve shillings for a brougham, and to
+spend I don't know how much in gloves, just to make our curtsies in
+Mrs. Timmins's little drawing-room."  Mrs. Moser made the latter
+remark about the Timmins affair, while the former was uttered by
+Mr. Grumpley, barrister-at-law, to his lady, in Gloucester Place.
+
+That there are people who are offended if you don't ask them at
+all, is a point which I suppose nobody will question.  Timmins's
+earliest friend in life was Simmins, whose wife and family have
+taken a cottage at Mortlake for the season.
+
+"We can't ask them to come out of the country," Rosa said to her
+Fitzroy--(between ourselves, she was delighted that Mrs. Simmins
+was out of the way, and was as jealous of her as every well-
+regulated woman should be of her husband's female friends)--"we
+can't ask them to come so far for the evening."
+
+"Why, no, certainly." said Fitzroy, who has himself no very great
+opinion of a tea-party; and so the Simminses were cut out of the
+list.
+
+And what was the consequence?  The consequence was, that Simmins
+and Timmins cut when they met at Westminster; that Mrs. Simmins
+sent back all the books which she had borrowed from Rosa, with a
+withering note of thanks; that Rosa goes about saying that Mrs.
+Simmins squints; that Mrs. S., on her side, declares that Rosa is
+crooked, and behaved shamefully to Captain Hicks in marrying
+Fitzroy over him, though she was forced to do it by her mother, and
+prefers the Captain to her husband to this day.  If, in a word,
+these two men could be made to fight, I believe their wives would
+not be displeased; and the reason of all this misery, rage, and
+dissension, lies in a poor little twopenny dinner-party in Lilliput
+Street.
+
+Well, the guests, both for before and after meat, having been
+asked, old Mrs. Gashleigh, Rosa's mother--(and, by consequence,
+Fitzroy's DEAR mother-in-law, though I promise you that "dear" is
+particularly sarcastic)--Mrs. Gashleigh of course was sent for, and
+came with Miss Eliza Gashleigh, who plays on the guitar, and Emily,
+who limps a little, but plays sweetly on the concertina.  They live
+close by--trust them for that.  Your mother-in-law is always within
+hearing, thank our stars for the attention of the dear women.  The
+Gashleighs, I say, live close by, and came early on the morning
+after Rosa's notes had been issued for the dinner.
+
+When Fitzroy, who was in his little study, which opens into his
+little dining-room--one of those absurd little rooms which ought to
+be called a gentleman's pantry, and is scarcely bigger than a
+shower-bath, or a state cabin in a ship--when Fitzroy heard his
+mother-in-law's knock, and her well-known scuffling and chattering
+in the passage--in which she squeezed up young Buttons, the page,
+while she put questions to him regarding baby, and the cook's
+health, and whether she had taken what Mrs. Gashleigh had sent
+overnight, and the housemaid's health, and whether Mr. Timmins had
+gone to chambers or not--and when, after this preliminary chatter,
+Buttons flung open the door, announcing--"Mrs. Gashleigh and the
+young ladies," Fitzroy laid down his Times newspaper with an
+expression that had best not be printed here, and took his hat and
+walked away.
+
+Mrs. Gashleigh has never liked him since he left off calling her
+mamma, and kissing her.  But he said he could not stand it any
+longer--he was hanged if he would.  So he went away to chambers,
+leaving the field clear to Rosa, mamma, and the two dear girls.
+
+Or to one of them, rather: for before leaving the house, he thought
+he would have a look at little Fitzroy up stairs in the nursery,
+and he found the child in the hands of his maternal aunt Eliza, who
+was holding him and pinching him as if he had been her guitar, I
+suppose; so that the little fellow bawled pitifully--and his father
+finally quitted the premises.
+
+No sooner was he gone, although the party was still a fortnight
+off, than the women pounced upon his little study, and began to put
+it in order.  Some of his papers they pushed up over the bookcase,
+some they put behind the Encyclopaedia.  Some they crammed into the
+drawers--where Mrs. Gashleigh found three cigars, which she
+pocketed, and some letters, over which she cast her eye; and by
+Fitz's return they had the room as neat as possible, and the best
+glass and dessert-service mustered on the study table.
+
+It was a very neat and handsome service, as you may be sure Mrs.
+Gashleigh thought, whose rich uncle had purchased it for the young
+couple, at Spode and Copeland's; but it was only for twelve
+persons.
+
+It was agreed that it would be, in all respects, cheaper and better
+to purchase a dozen more dessert-plates; and with "my silver basket
+in the centre," Mrs. G. said (she is always bragging about that
+confounded bread-basket), we need not have any extra china dishes,
+and the table will look very pretty."
+
+On making a roll-call of the glass, it was calculated that at least
+a dozen or so tumblers, four or five dozen wines, eight water-
+bottles, and a proper quantity of ice-plates, were requisite; and
+that, as they would always be useful, it would be best to purchase
+the articles immediately.  Fitz tumbled over the basket containing
+them, which stood in the hall as he came in from chambers, and over
+the boy who had brought them--and the little bill.
+
+The women had had a long debate, and something like a quarrel, it
+must be owned, over the bill of fare.  Mrs. Gashleigh, who had
+lived a great part of her life in Devonshire, and kept house in
+great state there, was famous for making some dishes, without
+which, she thought, no dinner could be perfect.  When she proposed
+her mock-turtle, and stewed pigeons, and gooseberry-cream, Rosa
+turned up her nose--a pretty little nose it was, by the way, and
+with a natural turn in that direction.
+
+"Mock-turtle in June, mamma!" said she.
+
+"It was good enough for your grandfather, Rosa," the mamma replied:
+"it was good enough for the Lord High Admiral, when he was at
+Plymouth; it was good enough for the first men in the county, and
+relished by Lord Fortyskewer and Lord Rolls; Sir Lawrence Porker
+ate twice of it after Exeter races; and I think it might be good
+enough for--"
+
+"I will NOT have it, mamma!" said Rosa, with a stamp of her foot;
+and Mrs. Gashleigh knew what resolution there was in that.  Once,
+when she had tried to physic the baby, there had been a similar
+fight between them.
+
+So Mrs. Gashleigh made out a carte, in which the soup was left with
+a dash--a melancholy vacuum; and in which the pigeons were
+certainly thrust in among the entrees; but Rosa determined they
+never should make an entree at all into HER dinner-party, but that
+she would have the dinner her own way.
+
+When Fitz returned, then, and after he had paid the little bill of
+6L. 14s. 6d. for the glass, Rosa flew to him with her sweetest
+smiles, and the baby in her arms.  And after she had made him
+remark how the child grew every day more and more like him, and
+after she had treated him to a number of compliments and caresses,
+which it were positively fulsome to exhibit in public, and after
+she had soothed him into good humor by her artless tenderness, she
+began to speak to him about some little points which she had at
+heart.
+
+She pointed out with a sigh how shabby the old curtains looked
+since the dear new glasses which her darling Fitz had given her had
+been put up in the drawing-room.  Muslin curtains cost nothing, and
+she must and would have them.
+
+The muslin curtains were accorded.  She and Fitz went and bought
+them at Shoolbred's, when you may be sure she treated herself
+likewise to a neat, sweet pretty half-mourning (for the Court, you
+know, is in mourning)--a neat sweet barege, or calimanco, or
+bombazine, or tiffany, or some such thing; but Madame Camille, of
+Regent Street, made it up, and Rosa looked like an angel in it on
+the night of her little dinner.
+
+"And, my sweet," she continued, after the curtains had been
+accorded, "mamma and I have been talking about the dinner.  She
+wants to make it very expensive, which I cannot allow.  I have been
+thinking of a delightful and economical plan, and you, my sweetest
+Fitz, must put it into execution."
+
+"I have cooked a mutton-chop when I was in chambers," Fitz said
+with a laugh.  "Am I to put on a cap and an apron?"
+
+"No: but you are to go to the 'Megatherium Club' (where, you
+wretch, you are always going without my leave), and you are to beg
+Monsieur Mirobolant, your famous cook, to send you one of his best
+aides-de-camp, as I know he will, and with his aid we can dress the
+dinner and the confectionery at home for ALMOST NOTHING, and we can
+show those purse-proud Topham Sawyers and Rowdys that the HUMBLE
+COTTAGE can furnish forth an elegant entertainment as well as the
+gilded halls of wealth."
+
+Fitz agreed to speak to Monsieur Mirobolant.  If Rosa had had a
+fancy for the cook of the Prime Minister, I believe the deluded
+creature of a husband would have asked Lord John for the loan of
+him.
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+Fitzroy Timmins, whose taste for wine is remarkable for so young a
+man, is a member of the committee of the "Megatherium Club," and
+the great Mirobolant, good-natured as all great men are, was only
+too happy to oblige him.  A young friend and protege of his, of
+considerable merit, M. Cavalcadour, happened to be disengaged
+through the lamented death of Lord Hauncher, with whom young
+Cavalcadour had made his debut as an artist.  He had nothing to
+refuse to his master, Mirobolant, and would impress himself to be
+useful to a gourmet so distinguished as Monsieur Timmins.  Fitz
+went away as pleased as Punch with this encomium of the great
+Mirobolant, and was one of those who voted against the decreasing
+of Mirobolant's salary, when the measure was proposed by Mr.
+Parings, Colonel Close, and the Screw party in the committee of the
+club.
+
+Faithful to the promise of his great master, the youthful Cavalcadour
+called in Lilliput Street the next day.  A rich crimson velvet
+waistcoat, with buttons of blue glass and gold, a variegated blue
+satin stock, over which a graceful mosaic chain hung in glittering
+folds, a white hat worn on one side of his long curling ringlets,
+redolent with the most delightful hair-oil--one of those white hats
+which looks as if it had been just skinned--and a pair of gloves not
+exactly of the color of beurre frais, but of beurre that has been up
+the chimney, with a natty cane with a gilt knob, completed the upper
+part at any rate, of the costume of the young fellow whom the page
+introduced to Mrs. Timmins.
+
+Her mamma and she had been just having a dispute about the
+gooseberry-cream when Cavalcadour arrived.  His presence silenced
+Mrs. Gashleigh; and Rosa, in carrying on a conversation with him in
+the French language--which she had acquired perfectly in an elegant
+finishing establishment in Kensington Square--had a great advantage
+over her mother, who could only pursue the dialogue with very much
+difficulty, eying one or other interlocutor with an alarmed and
+suspicious look, and gasping out "We" whenever she thought a proper
+opportunity arose for the use of that affirmative.
+
+"I have two leetl menus weez me," said Cavalcadour to Mrs. Gashleigh.
+
+"Minews--yes,--oh, indeed?" answered the lady.
+
+"Two little cartes."
+
+"Oh, two carts!  Oh, we," she said.  "Coming, I suppose?"  And she
+looked out of the window to see if they were there.
+
+Cavalcadour smiled.  He produced from a pocket-book a pink paper
+and a blue paper, on which he had written two bills of fare--the
+last two which he had composed for the lamented Hauncher--and he
+handed these over to Mrs. Fitzroy.
+
+The poor little woman was dreadfully puzzled with these documents,
+(she has them in her possession still,) and began to read from the
+pink one as follows:--
+
+
+                   "DINER POUR 16 PERSONNES.
+
+                  Potage (clair) a la Rigodon.
+                  Do. a la Prince de Tombuctou.
+
+                         Deux Poissons.
+
+       Saumon de Severne                 Rougets Gratines
+        a la Boadicee.                    a la Cleopatre.
+
+                          Deux Releves.
+
+         Le Chapeau-a-trois-cornes farci a la Robespierre.
+                   Le Tire-botte a l'Odalisque.
+
+                          Six Entrees.
+              Saute de Hannetons a l'Epingliere.
+                Cotelettes a la Megatherium.
+             Bourrasque de Veau a la Palsambleu.
+       Laitances de Carpe en goguette a la Reine Pomare.
+       Turban de Volaille a l'Archeveque de Cantorbery."
+
+
+And so on with the entremets, and hors d'oeuvres, and the rotis,
+and the releves.
+
+"Madame will see that the dinners are quite simple," said M.
+Cavalcadour.
+
+"Oh, quite!" said Rosa, dreadfully puzzled.
+
+"Which would Madame like?"
+
+"Which would we like, mamma?" Rosa asked; adding, as if after a
+little thought, "I think, sir, we should prefer the blue one."  At
+which Mrs. Gashleigh nodded as knowingly as she could; though pink
+or blue, I defy anybody to know what these cooks mean by their
+jargon.
+
+"If you please, Madame, we will go down below and examine the scene
+of operations," Monsieur Cavalcadour said; and so he was marshalled
+down the stairs to the kitchen, which he didn't like to name, and
+appeared before the cook in all his splendor.
+
+He cast a rapid glance round the premises, and a smile of something
+like contempt lighted up his features.  "Will you bring pen and
+ink, if you please, and I will write down a few of the articles
+which will be necessary for us?  We shall require, if you please,
+eight more stew-pans, a couple of braising-pans, eight saute-pans,
+six bainmarie-pans, a freezing-pot with accessories, and a few more
+articles of which I will inscribe the names."  And Mr. Cavalcadour
+did so, dashing down, with the rapidity of genius, a tremendous
+list of ironmongery goods, which he handed over to Mrs. Timmins.
+She and her mamma were quite frightened by the awful catalogue.
+
+"I will call three days hence and superintend the progress of
+matters; and we will make the stock for the soup the day before the
+dinner."
+
+"Don't you think, sir," here interposed Mrs. Gashleigh, "that one
+soup--a fine rich mock-turtle, such as I have seen in the best
+houses in the West of England, and such as the late Lord
+Fortyskewer--"
+
+"You will get what is wanted for the soups, if you please," Mr.
+Cavalcadour continued, not heeding this interruption, and as bold
+as a captain on his own quarter-deck: "for the stock of clear soup,
+you will get a leg of beef, a leg of veal, and a ham."
+
+"We, munseer," said the cook, dropping a terrified curtsy: "a leg
+of beef, a leg of veal, and a ham."
+
+"You can't serve a leg of veal at a party," said Mrs. Gashleigh;
+"and a leg of beef is not a company dish."
+
+"Madame, they are to make the stock of the clear soup," Mr.
+Cavalcadour said.
+
+"WHAT!" cried Mrs. Gashleigh; and the cook repeated his former
+expression.
+
+"Never, whilst I am in this house," cried out Mrs. Gashleigh,
+indignantly; "never in a Christian ENGLISH household; never shall
+such sinful waste be permitted by ME.  If you wish me to dine,
+Rosa, you must get a dinner less EXPENSIVE.  The Right Honorable
+Lord Fortyskewer could dine, sir, without these wicked luxuries,
+and I presume my daughter's guests can."
+
+"Madame is perfectly at liberty to decide," said M. Cavalcadour.
+"I came to oblige Madame and my good friend Mirobolant, not
+myself."
+
+"Thank you, sir, I think it WILL be too expensive," Rosa stammered
+in a great flutter; "but I am very much obliged to you."
+
+"Il n'y a point d'obligation, Madame," said Monsieur Alcide Camille
+Cavalcadour in his most superb manner; and, making a splendid bow
+to the lady of the house, was respectfully conducted to the upper
+regions by little Buttons, leaving Rosa frightened, the cook amazed
+and silent, and Mrs. Gashleigh boiling with indignation against the
+dresser.
+
+Up to that moment, Mrs. Blowser, the cook, who had come out of
+Devonshire with Mrs. Gashleigh (of course that lady garrisoned her
+daughter's house with servants, and expected them to give her
+information of everything which took place there) up to that
+moment, I say, the cook had been quite contented with that
+subterraneous station which she occupied in life, and had a pride
+in keeping her kitchen neat, bright, and clean.  It was, in her
+opinion, the comfortablest room in the house (we all thought so
+when we came down of a night to smoke there), and the handsomest
+kitchen in Lilliput Street.
+
+But after the visit of Cavalcadour, the cook became quite
+discontented and uneasy in her mind.  She talked in a melancholy
+manner over the area-railings to the cooks at twenty-three and
+twenty-five.  She stepped over the way, and conferred with the cook
+there.  She made inquiries at the baker's and at other places about
+the kitchens in the great houses in Brobdingnag Gardens, and how
+many spits, bangmarry-pans, and stoo-pans they had.  She thought
+she could not do with an occasional help, but must have a kitchen-
+maid.  And she was often discovered by a gentleman of the police
+force, who was, I believe, her cousin, and occasionally visited her
+when Mrs. Gashleigh was not in the house or spying it:--she was
+discovered seated with MRS. RUNDELL in her lap, its leaves
+bespattered with her tears.  "My pease be gone, Pelisse," she said,
+"zins I zaw that ther Franchman!"  And it was all the faithful
+fellow could do to console her.
+
+"---- the dinner!" said Timmins, in a rage at last.  "Having it
+cooked in the house is out of the question.  The bother of it, and
+the row your mother makes, are enough to drive one mad.  It won't
+happen again, I can promise you, Rosa.  Order it at Fubsby's, at
+once.  You can have everything from Fubsby's--from footmen to
+saltspoons.  Let's go and order it at Fubsby's."
+
+"Darling, if you don't mind the expense, and it will be any relief
+to you, let us do as you wish," Rosa said; and she put on her
+bonnet, and they went off to the grand cook and confectioner of the
+Brobdingnag quarter.
+
+
+V.
+
+
+On the arm of her Fitzroy, Rosa went off to Fubsby's, that
+magnificent shop at the corner of Parliament Place and Alicompayne
+Square,--a shop into which the rogue had often cast a glance of
+approbation as he passed: for there are not only the most wonderful
+and delicious cakes and confections in the window, but at the
+counter there are almost sure to be three or four of the prettiest
+women in the whole of this world, with little darling caps of the
+last French make, with beautiful wavy hair, and the neatest
+possible waists and aprons.
+
+Yes, there they sit; and others, perhaps, besides Fitz have cast a
+sheep's-eye through those enormous plate-glass windowpanes.  I
+suppose it is the fact of perpetually living among such a quantity
+of good things that makes those young ladies so beautiful.  They
+come into the place, let us say, like ordinary people, and
+gradually grow handsomer and handsomer, until they grow out into
+the perfect angels you see.  It can't be otherwise: if you and I,
+my dear fellow, were to have a course of that place, we should
+become beautiful too.  They live in an atmosphere of the most
+delicious pine-apples, blanc-manges, creams, (some whipt, and some
+so good that of course they don't want whipping,) jellies, tipsy-
+cakes, cherry-brandy--one hundred thousand sweet and lovely things.
+Look at the preserved fruits, look at the golden ginger, the
+outspreading ananas, the darling little rogues of China oranges,
+ranged in the gleaming crystal cylinders.  Mon Dieu!  Look at the
+strawberries in the leaves.  Each of them is as large nearly as a
+lady's reticule, and looks as if it had been brought up in a
+nursery to itself.  One of those strawberries is a meal for those
+young ladies, behind the counter; they nibble off a little from the
+side, and if they are very hungry, which can scarcely ever happen,
+they are allowed to go to the crystal canisters and take out a
+rout-cake or macaroon.  In the evening they sit and tell each other
+little riddles out of the bonbons; and when they wish to amuse
+themselves, they read the most delightful remarks, in the French
+language, about Love, and Cupid, and Beauty, before they place them
+inside the crackers.  They always are writing down good things into
+Mr. Fubsby's ledgers.  It must be a perfect feast to read them.
+Talk of the Garden of Eden!  I believe it was nothing to Mr.
+Fubsby's house; and I have no doubt that after those young ladies
+have been there a certain time, they get to such a pitch of
+loveliness at last, that they become complete angels, with wings
+sprouting out of their lovely shoulders, when (after giving just a
+preparatory balance or two) they fly up to the counter and perch
+there for a minute, hop down again, and affectionately kiss the
+other young ladies, and say, "Good-by, dears!  We shall meet again
+la haut."  And then with a whir of their deliciously scented wings,
+away they fly for good, whisking over the trees of Brobdingnag
+Square, and up into the sky, as the policeman touches his hat.
+
+It is up there that they invent the legends for the crackers, and
+the wonderful riddles and remarks on the bonbons.  No mortal, I am
+sure, could write them.
+
+I never saw a man in such a state as Fitzroy Timmins in the
+presence of those ravishing houris.  Mrs. Fitz having explained
+that they required a dinner for twenty persons, the chief young
+lady asked what Mr. and Mrs. Fitz would like, and named a thousand
+things, each better than the other, to all of which Fitz instantly
+said yes.  The wretch was in such a state of infatuation that I
+believe if that lady had proposed to him a fricasseed elephant, or
+a boa-constrictor in jelly, he would have said, "O yes, certainly;
+put it down."
+
+That Peri wrote down in her album a list of things which it would
+make your mouth water to listen to.  But she took it all quite
+calmly.  Heaven bless you! THEY don't care about things that are no
+delicacies to them!  But whatever she chose to write down, Fitzroy
+let her.
+
+After the dinner and dessert were ordered (at Fubsby's they furnish
+everything: dinner and dessert, plate and china, servants in your
+own livery, and, if you please, guests of title too), the married
+couple retreated from that shop of wonders; Rosa delighted that the
+trouble of the dinner was all off their hands but she was afraid it
+would be rather expensive.
+
+"Nothing can be too expensive which pleases YOU, dear," Fitz said.
+
+"By the way, one of those young women was rather good-looking,"
+Rosa remarked: "the one in the cap with the blue ribbons."  (And
+she cast about the shape of the cap in her mind, and determined to
+have exactly such another.)
+
+"Think so?  I didn't observe," said the miserable hypocrite by her
+side; and when he had seen Rosa home, he went back, like an
+infamous fiend, to order something else which he had forgotten, he
+said, at Fubsby's.  Get out of that Paradise, you cowardly,
+creeping, vile serpent you!
+
+Until the day of the dinner, the infatuated fop was ALWAYS going to
+Fubsby's.  HE WAS REMARKED THERE.  He used to go before he went to
+chambers in the morning, and sometimes on his return from the
+Temple: but the morning was the time which he preferred; and one
+day, when he went on one of his eternal pretexts, and was
+chattering and flirting at the counter, a lady who had been reading
+yesterday's paper and eating a halfpenny bun for an hour in the
+back shop (if that paradise may be called a shop)--a lady stepped
+forward, laid down the Morning Herald, and confronted him.
+
+That lady was Mrs. Gashleigh.  From that day the miserable Fitzroy
+was in her power; and she resumed a sway over his house, to shake
+off which had been the object of his life, and the result of many
+battles.  And for a mere freak--(for, on going into Fubsby's a week
+afterwards he found the Peris drinking tea out of blue cups, and
+eating stale bread and butter, when his absurd passion instantly
+vanished)--I say, for a mere freak, the most intolerable burden of
+his life was put on his shoulders again--his mother-in-law.
+
+On the day before the little dinner took place--and I promise you
+we shall come to it in the very next chapter--a tall and elegant
+middle-aged gentleman, who might have passed for an earl but that
+there was a slight incompleteness about his hands and feet, the
+former being uncommonly red, and the latter large and irregular,
+was introduced to Mrs. Timmins by the page, who announced him as
+Mr. Truncheon.
+
+"I'm Truncheon, Ma'am," he said, with a low bow.
+
+"Indeed!" said Rosa.
+
+"About the dinner M'm, from Fubsby's, M'm.  As you have no butler,
+M'm, I presume you will wish me to act as sich.  I shall bring two
+persons as haids to-morrow; both answers to the name of John.  I'd
+best, if you please, inspect the premisis, and will think you to
+allow your young man to show me the pantry and kitching."
+
+Truncheon spoke in a low voice, and with the deepest and most
+respectful melancholy.  There is not much expression in his eyes,
+but from what there is, you would fancy that he was oppressed by a
+secret sorrow.  Rosa trembled as she surveyed this gentleman's
+size, his splendid appearance, and gravity.  "I am sure," she said,
+"I never shall dare to ask him to hand a glass of water."  Even
+Mrs. Gashleigh, when she came on the morning of the actual dinner-
+party, to superintend matters, was cowed, and retreated from the
+kitchen before the calm majesty of Truncheon.
+
+And yet that great man was, like all the truly great--affable.
+
+He put aside his coat and waistcoat (both of evening cut, and
+looking prematurely splendid as he walked the streets in noonday),
+and did not disdain to rub the glasses and polish the decanters,
+and to show young Buttons the proper mode of preparing these
+articles for a dinner.  And while he operated, the maids, and
+Buttons, and cook, when she could--and what had she but the
+vegetables to boil?--crowded round him, and listened with wonder as
+he talked of the great families as he had lived with.  That man, as
+they saw him there before them, had been cab-boy to Lord Tantallan,
+valet to the Earl of Bareacres, and groom of the chambers to the
+Duchess Dowager of Fitzbattleaxe.  Oh, it was delightful to hear
+Mr. Truncheon!
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+On the great, momentous, stupendous day of the dinner, my beloved
+female reader may imagine that Fitzroy Timmins was sent about his
+business at an early hour in the morning, while the women began to
+make preparations to receive their guests.  "There will be no need
+of your going to Fubsby's," Mrs. Gashleigh said to him, with a look
+that drove him out of doors.  "Everything that we require has been
+ordered THERE!  You will please to be back here at six o'clock, and
+not sooner: and I presume you will acquiesce in my arrangements
+about the WINE?"
+
+"O yes, mamma," said the prostrate son-in-law.
+
+"In so large a party--a party beyond some folks MEANS--expensive
+WINES are ABSURD.  The light sherry at 26s., the champagne at 42s.;
+and you are not to go beyond 36s. for the claret and port after
+dinner.  Mind, coffee will be served; and you come up stairs after
+two rounds of the claret."
+
+"Of course, of course," acquiesced the wretch; and hurried out of
+the house to his chambers, and to discharge the commissions with
+which the womankind had intrusted him.
+
+As for Mrs. Gashleigh, you might have heard her bawling over the
+house the whole day long.  That admirable woman was everywhere: in
+the kitchen until the arrival of Truncheon, before whom she would
+not retreat without a battle; on the stairs; in Fitzroy's dressing-
+room; and in Fitzroy minor's nursery, to whom she gave a dose of
+her own composition, while the nurse was sent out on a pretext to
+make purchases of garnish for the dishes to be served for the
+little dinner.  Garnish for the dishes!  As if the folks at
+Fubsby's could not garnish dishes better than Gashleigh, with her
+stupid old-world devices of laurel-leaves, parsley, and cut
+turnips!  Why, there was not a dish served that day that was not
+covered over with skewers, on which truffles, crayfish, mushrooms,
+and forced-meat were impaled.  When old Gashleigh went down with
+her barbarian bunches of holly and greens to stick about the meats,
+even the cook saw their incongruity, and, at Truncheon's orders,
+flung the whole shrubbery into the dust-house, where, while poking
+about the premises, you may be sure Mrs. G. saw it.
+
+Every candle which was to be burned that night (including the
+tallow candle, which she said was a good enough bed-light for
+Fitzroy) she stuck into the candlesticks with her own hands, giving
+her own high-shouldered plated candlesticks of the year 1798 the
+place of honor.  She upset all poor Rosa's floral arrangements,
+turning the nosegays from one vase into the other without any pity,
+and was never tired of beating, and pushing, and patting, and
+WHAPPING the curtain and sofa draperies into shape in the little
+drawing-room.
+
+In Fitz's own apartments she revelled with peculiar pleasure.  It
+has been described how she had sacked his study and pushed away his
+papers, some of which, including three cigars, and the commencement
+of an article for the Law Magazine, "Lives of the Sheriffs'
+Officers," he has never been able to find to this day.  Mamma now
+went into the little room in the back regions, which is Fitz's
+dressing-room, (and was destined to be a cloak-room,) and here she
+rummaged to her heart's delight.
+
+In an incredibly short space of time she examined all his outlying
+pockets, drawers, and letters; she inspected his socks and
+handkerchiefs in the top drawers; and on the dressing-table, his
+razors, shaving-strop, and hair-oil.  She carried off his silver-
+topped scent-bottle out of his dressing-case, and a half-dozen of
+his favorite pills (which Fitz possesses in common with every well-
+regulated man), and probably administered them to her own family.
+His boots, glossy pumps, and slippers she pushed into the shower-
+bath, where the poor fellow stepped into them the next morning, in
+the midst of a pool in which they were lying.  The baby was found
+sucking his boot-hooks the next day in the nursery; and as for the
+bottle of varnish for his shoes, (which he generally paints upon
+the trees himself, having a pretty taste in that way,) it could
+never be found to the present hour but it was remarked that the
+young Master Gashleighs, when they came home for the holidays,
+always wore lacquered highlows; and the reader may draw his
+conclusions from THAT fact.
+
+In the course of the day all the servants gave Mrs. Timmins
+warning.
+
+The cook said she coodn't abear it no longer, 'aving Mrs. G. always
+about her kitching, with her fingers in all the saucepans.  Mrs. G.
+had got her the place, but she preferred one as Mrs. G. didn't get
+for her.
+
+The nurse said she was come to nuss Master Fitzroy, and knew her
+duty; his grandmamma wasn't his nuss, and was always aggrawating
+her,--missus must shoot herself elsewhere.
+
+The housemaid gave utterance to the same sentiments in language
+more violent.
+
+Little Buttons bounced up to his mistress, said he was butler of
+the family, Mrs. G. was always poking about his pantry, and dam if
+he'd stand it.
+
+At every moment Rosa grew more and more bewildered.  The baby
+howled a great deal during the day.  His large china christening-
+bowl was cracked by Mrs. Gashleigh altering the flowers in it, and
+pretending to be very cool, whilst her hands shook with rage.
+
+"Pray go on, mamma," Rosa said with tears in her eyes.  "Should you
+like to break the chandelier?"
+
+"Ungrateful, unnatural child!" bellowed the other.  "Only that I
+know you couldn't do without me, I'd leave the house this minute."
+
+"As you wish," said Rosa; but Mrs. G. DIDN'T wish: and in this
+juncture Truncheon arrived.
+
+That officer surveyed the dining-room, laid the cloth there with
+admirable precision and neatness; ranged the plate on the sideboard
+with graceful accuracy, but objected to that old thing in the
+centre, as he called Mrs. Gashleigh's silver basket, as cumbrous
+and useless for the table, where they would want all the room they
+could get.
+
+Order was not restored to the house, nor, indeed, any decent
+progress made, until this great man came: but where there was a
+revolt before, and a general disposition to strike work and to yell
+out defiance against Mrs. Gashleigh, who was sitting bewildered and
+furious in the drawing-room--where there was before commotion, at
+the appearance of the master-spirit, all was peace and unanimity:
+the cook went back to her pans, the housemaid busied herself with
+the china and glass, cleaning some articles and breaking others,
+Buttons sprang up and down the stairs, obedient to the orders of
+his chief, and all things went well and in their season.
+
+At six, the man with the wine came from Binney and Latham's.  At a
+quarter past six, Timmins himself arrived.
+
+At half past six he might have been heard shouting out for his
+varnished boots but we know where THOSE had been hidden--and for
+his dressing things; but Mrs. Gashleigh had put them away.
+
+As in his vain inquiries for these articles he stood shouting,
+"Nurse! Buttons! Rosa my dear!" and the most fearful execrations up
+and down the stairs, Mr. Truncheon came out on him.
+
+"Egscuse me, sir," says he, "but it's impawsable.  We can't dine
+twenty at that table--not if you set 'em out awinder, we can't."
+
+"What's to be done?" asked Fitzroy, in an agony; "they've all said
+they'd come."
+
+"Can't do it," said the other; "with two top and bottom--and your
+table is as narrow as a bench--we can't hold more than heighteen,
+and then each person's helbows will be into his neighbor's cheer."
+
+"Rosa! Mrs. Gashleigh!" cried out Timmins, "come down and speak to
+this gentl--this--"
+
+"Truncheon, sir," said the man.
+
+The women descended from the drawing-room.  "Look and see, ladies,"
+he said, inducting them into the dining-room: "there's the room,
+there's the table laid for heighteen, and I defy you to squeege in
+more."
+
+"One person in a party always fails," said Mrs. Gashleigh, getting
+alarmed.
+
+"That's nineteen," Mr. Truncheon remarked.  "We must knock another
+hoff, Ma'm."  And he looked her hard in the face.
+
+Mrs. Gashleigh was very red and nervous, and paced, or rather
+squeezed round the table (it was as much as she could do).  The
+chairs could not be put any closer than they were.  It was
+impossible, unless the convive sat as a centre-piece in the middle,
+to put another guest at that table.
+
+"Look at that lady movin' round, sir.  You see now the difficklty.
+If my men wasn't thinner, they couldn't hoperate at all," Mr.
+Truncheon observed, who seemed to have a spite to Mrs. Gashleigh.
+
+"What is to be done?" she said, with purple accents.
+
+"My dearest mamma," Rosa cried out, "you must stop at home--how
+sorry I am!"  And she shot one glance at Fitzroy, who shot another
+at the great Truncheon, who held down his eyes.  "We could manage
+with heighteen," he said, mildly.
+
+Mrs. Gashleigh gave a hideous laugh.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+She went away.  At eight o'clock she was pacing at the corner of
+the street, and actually saw the company arrive.  First came the
+Topham Sawyers, in their light-blue carriage with the white
+hammercloth and blue and white ribbons--their footmen drove the
+house down with the knocking.
+
+Then followed the ponderous and snuff-colored vehicle, with faded
+gilt wheels and brass earl's coronets all over it, the conveyance
+of the House of Bungay.  The Countess of Bungay and daughter
+stepped out of the carriage.  The fourteenth Earl of Bungay
+couldn't come.
+
+Sir Thomas and Lady Gulpin's fly made its appearance, from which
+issued the General with his star, and Lady Gulpin in yellow satin.
+The Rowdys' brougham followed next; after which Mrs. Butt's
+handsome equipage drove up.
+
+The two friends of the house, young gentlemen from the Temple, now
+arrived in cab No. 9996.  We tossed up, in fact, which should pay
+the fare.
+
+Mr. Ranville Ranville walked, and was dusting his boots as the
+Templars drove up.  Lord Castlemouldy came out of a twopenny
+omnibus.  Funnyman, the wag, came last, whirling up rapidly in a
+hansom, just as Mrs. Gashleigh, with rage in her heart, was
+counting that two people had failed, and that there were only
+seventeen after all.
+
+Mr. Truncheon passed our names to Mr. Billiter, who bawled them out
+on the stairs.  Rosa was smiling in a pink dress, and looking as
+fresh as an angel, and received her company with that grace which
+has always characterized her.
+
+The moment of the dinner arrived, old Lady Bungay scuffled off on
+the arm of Fitzroy, while the rear was brought up by Rosa and Lord
+Castlemouldy, of Ballyshanvanvoght Castle, co, Tipperary.  Some
+fellows who had the luck took down ladies to dinner.  I was not
+sorry to be out of the way of Mrs. Rowdy, with her dandified airs,
+or of that high and mighty county princess, Mrs. Topham Sawyer.
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+Of course it does not become the present writer, who has partaken
+of the best entertainment which his friends could supply, to make
+fun of their (somewhat ostentatious, as it must be confessed)
+hospitality.  If they gave a dinner beyond their means, it is no
+business of mine.  I hate a man who goes and eats a friend's meat,
+and then blabs the secrets of the mahogany.  Such a man deserves
+never to be asked to dinner again; and though at the close of a
+London season that seems no great loss, and you sicken of a
+whitebait as you would of a whale--yet we must always remember
+that there's another season coming, and hold our tongues for the
+present.
+
+As for describing, then, the mere victuals on Timmins's table, that
+would be absurd.  Everybody--(I mean of the genteel world of
+course, of which I make no doubt the reader is a polite ornament)--
+Everybody has the same everything in London.  You see the same
+coats, the same dinners, the same boiled fowls and mutton, the same
+cutlets, fish, and cucumbers, the same lumps of Wenham Lake ice,
+&c.  The waiters with white neck-cloths are as like each other
+everywhere as the peas which they hand round with the ducks of the
+second course.  Can't any one invent anything new?
+
+The only difference between Timmins's dinner and his neighbor's
+was, that he had hired, as we have said, the greater part of the
+plate, and that his cowardly conscience magnified faults and
+disasters of which no one else probably took heed.
+
+But Rosa thought, from the supercilious air with which Mrs. Topham
+Sawyer was eying the plate and other arrangements, that she was
+remarking the difference of the ciphers on the forks and spoons--
+which had, in fact, been borrowed from every one of Fitzroy's
+friends--(I know, for instance, that he had my six, among others,
+and only returned five, along with a battered old black-pronged
+plated abomination, which I have no doubt belongs to Mrs.
+Gashleigh, whom I hereby request to send back mine in exchange)--
+their guilty consciences, I say, made them fancy that every one was
+spying out their domestic deficiencies: whereas, it is probable
+that nobody present thought of their failings at all.  People never
+do: they never see holes in their neighbors' coats--they are too
+indolent, simple, and charitable.
+
+Some things, however, one could not help remarking: for instance,
+though Fitz is my closest friend, yet could I avoid seeing and being
+amused by his perplexity and his dismal efforts to be facetious?
+His eye wandered all round the little room with quick uneasy
+glances, very different from those frank and jovial looks with which
+he is accustomed to welcome you to a leg of mutton; and Rosa, from
+the other end of the table, and over the flowers, entree dishes, and
+wine-coolers, telegraphed him with signals of corresponding alarm.
+Poor devils! why did they ever go beyond that leg of mutton?
+
+Funnyman was not brilliant in conversation, scarcely opening his
+mouth, except for the purposes of feasting.  The fact is, our
+friend Tom Dawson was at table, who knew all his stories, and in
+his presence the greatest wag is always silent and uneasy.
+
+Fitz has a very pretty wit of his own, and a good reputation on
+circuit; but he is timid before great people.  And indeed the
+presence of that awful Lady Bungay on his right hand was enough
+to damp him.  She was in court mourning (for the late Prince of
+Schlippenschloppen).  She had on a large black funereal turban
+and appurtenances, and a vast breastplate of twinkling,
+twiddling black bugles.  No wonder a man could not be gay in
+talking to HER.
+
+Mrs. Rowdy and Mrs. Topham Sawyer love each other as women do
+who have the same receiving nights, and ask the same society;
+they were only separated by Ranville Ranville, who tries to be
+well with both and they talked at each other across him.
+
+Topham and Rowdy growled out a conversation about Rum, Ireland,
+and the Navigation Laws, quite unfit for print.  Sawyer never
+speaks three words without mentioning the House and the Speaker.
+
+The Irish Peer said nothing (which was a comfort) but he ate and
+drank of everything which came in his way; and cut his usual
+absurd figure in dyed whiskers and a yellow under-waistcoat.
+
+General Gulpin sported his star, and looked fat and florid, but
+melancholy.  His wife ordered away his dinner, just like honest
+Sancho's physician at Barataria.
+
+Botherby's stories about Lamartine are as old as the hills,
+since the barricades of 1848; and he could not get in a word or
+cut the slightest figure.  And as for Tom Dawson, he was
+carrying on an undertoned small-talk with Lady Barbara St.
+Mary's, so that there was not much conversation worth record
+going on WITHIN the dining-room.
+
+Outside it was different.  Those houses in Lilliput Street are
+so uncommonly compact, that you can hear everything which takes
+place all over the tenement; and so--
+
+In the awful pauses of the banquet, and the hall-door being
+furthermore open, we had the benefit of hearing:
+
+The cook, and the occasional cook, below stairs, exchanging
+rapid phrases regarding the dinner;
+
+The smash of the soup-tureen, and swift descent of the kitchen-
+maid and soup-ladle down the stairs to the lower regions.  This
+accident created a laugh, and rather amused Fitzroy and the
+company, and caused Funnyman to say, bowing to Rosa, that she
+was mistress of herself, though China fall.  But she did not
+heed him, for at that moment another noise commenced, namely,
+that of--
+
+The baby in the upper rooms, who commenced a series of piercing
+yells, which, though stopped by the sudden clapping to of the
+nursery-door, were only more dreadful to the mother when
+suppressed.  She would have given a guinea to go up stairs and
+have done with the whole entertainment.
+
+A thundering knock came at the door very early after the
+dessert, and the poor soul took a speedy opportunity of
+summoning the ladies to depart, though you may be sure it was
+only old Mrs. Gashleigh, who had come with her daughters--of
+course the first person to come.  I saw her red gown whisking up
+the stairs, which were covered with plates and dishes, over
+which she trampled.
+
+Instead of having any quiet after the retreat of the ladies, the
+house was kept in a rattle, and the glasses jingled on the table
+as the flymen and coachmen plied the knocker, and the soiree
+came in.  From my place I could see everything: the guests as
+they arrived (I remarked very few carriages, mostly cabs and
+flies), and a little crowd of blackguard boys and children, who
+were formed round the door, and gave ironical cheers to the
+folks as they stepped out of their vehicles.
+
+As for the evening-party, if a crowd in the dog-days is
+pleasant, poor Mrs. Timmins certainly had a successful soiree.
+You could hardly move on the stair.  Mrs. Sternhold broke in the
+banisters, and nearly fell through.  There was such a noise and
+chatter you could not hear the singing of the Miss Gashleighs,
+which was no great loss.  Lady Bungay could hardly get to her
+carriage, being entangled with Colonel Wedgewood in the passage.
+An absurd attempt was made to get up a dance of some kind; but
+before Mrs. Crowder had got round the room, the hanging-lamp in
+the dining-room below was stove in, and fell with a crash on the
+table, now prepared for refreshment.
+
+Why, in fact, did the Timminses give that party at all?  It was
+quite beyond their means.  They have offended a score of their
+old friends, and pleased none of their acquaintances.  So angry
+were many who were not asked, that poor Rosa says she must now
+give a couple more parties and take in those not previously
+invited.  And I know for a fact that Fubsby's bill is not yet
+paid; nor Binney and Latham's the wine-merchants; that the
+breakage and hire of glass and china cost ever so much money;
+that every true friend of Timmins has cried out against his
+absurd extravagance, and that now, when every one is going out
+of town, Fitz has hardly money to pay his circuit, much more to
+take Rosa to a watering-place, as he wished and promised.
+
+As for Mrs. Gashleigh, the only feasible plan of economy which
+she can suggest, is that she could come and live with her
+daughter and son-in-law, and that they should keep house
+together.  If he agrees to this, she has a little sum at the
+banker's, with which she would not mind easing his present
+difficulties; and the poor wretch is so utterly bewildered and
+crestfallen that it is very likely he will become her victim.
+
+The Topham Sawyers, when they go down into the country, will
+represent Fitz as a ruined man and reckless prodigal; his uncle,
+the attorney, from whom he has expectations, will most likely
+withdraw his business, and adopt some other member of his
+family--Blanche Crowder for instance, whose husband, the doctor,
+has had high words with poor Fitzroy already, of course at the
+women's instigation.  And all these accumulated miseries fall
+upon the unfortunate wretch because he was good-natured, and his
+wife would have a Little Dinner.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Little Dinner at Timmins's, by Thackeray
+
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