" Any subject but that ! " says Mr. Guppy, with a gloomy enjo^meut of his injury. " For there are chords, Jobling — " Mr. Jobling begs pardon again. During this short colloquy, the active Smallweed, who is of the dinner party, has written in legal characters on a slip of paper, " Eetmii imme- diately." This notification to all whom it may concern, he inserts in the letter-box ; and then putting on the taU hat, at the angle of incKnation at which Mr. Guppy wears his, informs his patron that they may now make themselves scarce. Accordingly they betake themselves to a neighbouring dining-house, of the class known among its frequenters by the denomination Slap-Bang, where the waitress, a bouncing young female of forty, is supposed to have made some impression on the susceptible Smallweed*; of whom it may be remarked that he is a weii'd changeling, to whom years are nothing. He stands precociously possessed of centuries of owlish wisdom. If he ever la}'^ in a cradle, it seems as if he must have lain there in a tail-coat. He has an old, old eye, has Smallweed ; and he drinks, and smokes, in a monkeyish way ; and his neck is stiff in his collar ; and he is never to be taken in; and he knows all about it, whatever it is. In short, in his bringing up, he has been so nursed by Law and Equity that he has become a kind of fossil Imp, to account for whose terrestrial existence it is reported at the public offices that his father was John Doe, and his mother the only female member of the Koe family ; also that his first long-clothes were made from a blue bag. Into the Dining House, unafl^ected by the seductive show in tlie mndow, of artificially whitened cauliflowers and poidtry, verdant baskets of peas, coolly blooming cucumbers, and joints ready for the spit, Mr. Smallweed leads the way. They know him there, and defer to him. He has his favorite box, he bespeaks aU the papers, he is down upon bald patriarchs, who keep them more than ten minutes afterwards. It is of no use trying him with anything less than a full-sized " bread," or proposing to him any joint in cut, unless it is in the very best cut. In the matter of gTavy he is adamant. Conscious of his elfin power, and submitting to his di*ead experience, Mr. Guppy consults liim in the choice of that day's banquet ; turning an appealing look toward him as the waitress repeats the catalogue of viands, and saying " What do you take, Cliick ? " Chick, out of the profmidity of his artfulness, preferring '•' veal and ham and French beans — And don't you forget the stuffing, Polly," (mth an unearthly cock of his venerable eye) ; Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling give the like order. Three pint pots of half-and-half are superadded. Quickly the waitress returns, bearing what is apparently a model of the tower of Babel, but what is reaUy a pile of plates and flat tin dish-covers. Mr. Smallweed, approving of what is set before him, conveys intelligent benignity into his ancient eye, and winks upon her. Then, amid a constant coming in, and going out, and running about, and a clatter of crockery, and a rumbling up and doA^^i of the machine which brings the nice cuts from the kitchen, and a shi'ill crying for more nice cuts down the speaking-pipe, and a shriU reckoning of the cost of nice cuts that have been disposed of, and a general flush and steam of hot joints, cut and uncut, and a considerably heated atmo- sphere in which the soiled knives and table-cloths seem to break out o 2
