vegetables in which float balls of forcemeat, then boiled plaice, followed by an enormous round of beef, red and juicy. After that, home-made apple cake. With this we drink claret, which is not too generously poured out, but which it is almost a crime to drink, so intoxicatingly beautiful is its perfume: it is a relic from the days of my right reverend grandfather, who died fifteen years ago. At dessert Madeira is handed round.
I cannot say that grandmama's dinners are very amusing, and yet how cosy and comfortable her home is. All inharmonious things must depart in the presence of this dignified old age, even father does his best to be more sociable. What a wonderful appetite it gives one to see grandmama with her kind eyes watching to see that each one gets something really nice and tempting, and to hear her hospitable invitation to second helpings. I smile to think how greedy I am at these dinners, where we linger over each dish, which is handed round with festive dignity by an old maid-servant in a spotless, old-fashioned apron; not to mention Frantz, who stuffs himself with quite indecent gluttony.
At the dessert grandmama lifts her glass and says, always in the same words: 'Then let us drink a happy New Year to every one, but most of all to the young people.' When to-day I clinked my glass against hers, for I sat next to her at dinner, she looked at me for a long time, with her large eyes and said, 'I drink to you!'—'Thank you, grandmama.' She looked again at me and said,
