The time came, without bringing with it any
relief to my feelings, and the company came.
Mr. Wopsle, united to a Roman nose and a large
shining bald forehead, had a deep voice which
he was uncommonly proud of; indeed it was understood
among his acquaintance that if you could
only give him his head, he would read the clergyman
into fits; he himself confessed that if the
Church was "thrown open," meaning to competition,
he would not despair of making his
mark in it. The Church not being "thrown
open," he was, as I have said, our clerk. But
he punished the Amens tremendously; and
when he gave out the psalm—always giving the
whole verse—he looked all round the congregation
first, as much as to say, "You have heard
my friend overhead; oblige me with your opinion
of this style!"

I opened the door to the company—making
believe that it was a habit of ours to open that
door—and I opened it first to Mr. Wopsle, next
to Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, and last of all to
Uncle Pumblechook. N.B. I was not allowed
to call him uncle, under the severest penalties.

"Mrs. Joe," said Uncle Pumblechook: a
large hard-breathing middle-aged slow man,
with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and
sandy hair standing upright on his head, so
that he looked as if he had just been all but
choked, and had that moment come to; "I have
brought you, as the compliments of the season
—I have brought you, Mum, a bottle of sherry
wine—and I have brought you, Mum, a bottle of
port wine."

Every Christmas Day he presented himself,
as a profound novelty, with exactly the same
words, and carrying the two bottles like dumbbells.
Every Christmas Day, Mrs. Joe replied,
as she now replied, " Oh, Un—cle Pum—ble—chook!
This IS kind!" Every Christmas Day,
he retorted, as he now retorted, "It's no more
than your merits. And now are you all bobbish,
and how's Sixpennorth of halfpence?"
meaning me.

We dined on these occasions in the kitchen,
and adjourned, for the nuts and oranges and
apples, to the parlour; which was a change very
like Joe's change from his working clothes to
his Sunday dress. My sister was uncommonly
lively on the present occasion, and indeed was
generally more gracious in the society of Mrs.
Hubble than in any other company. I remember
Mrs. Hubble as a little curly sharp-edged
person in sky-blue, who held a conventionally
juvenile position, because she had married Mr.
Hubble—I don't know at what remote period—
when she was much younger than he. I remember
Mr. Hubble as a tough high-shouldered
stooping old man, of a sawdusty fragrance, with
his legs extraordinarily wide apart: so that in my
short days I always saw some miles of open country
between them when I met him coming up
the lane.

Among this good company, I should have felt
myself, even if I hadn't robbed the pantry, in a
false position. Not because I was squeezed in at
au acute angle of the tablecloth, with the table
in my chest, and the Pumblechookian elbow in
my eye, nor because I was not allowed to speak
(I didn't want to speak), nor because I was regaled
with the scaly tips of the drumsticks of
the fowls, and with those obscure corners of
pork of which the pig, when living, had had the
least reason to be vain. No; I should not
have minded that, if they would only have left
me alone. But they wouldn't leave me alone.
They seemed to think the opportunity lost, if
they failed to point the conversation at me, every
now and then, and stick the point into me. I
might have been an unfortunate little bull in a
Spanish arena, I got so smartingly touched up
by these moral goads.

It began the moment we sat down to dinner.
Mr. Wopsle said grace with theatrical declamation
—as it now appears to me, something like a
religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with
Richard the Third—and ended with the very
proper aspiration that we might be truly
grateful. Upon which my sister fixed me with
her eye, and said, in a low reproachful voice,
"Do you hear that? Be grateful."

"Especially," said Mr. Pumblechook, "be
grateful, boy, to them which brought you up by
hand."

Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contemplating
me with a mournful presentiment that
I should come to no good, asked, "Why is it
that the young are never grateful?" This moral
mystery seemed too much for the company
until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying,
"Naterally wicious." Everybody then murmured
"True!" and looked at me in a particularly
unpleasant and personal manner.

Joe's station and influence were something
feebler (if possible) when there was company,
than when there was none. But he always aided
and comforted me when he could, in some way
of his own, and he always did so at dinner-time
by giving me gravy, if there were any. There
being plenty of gravy to-day, Joe spooned into
my plate, at this point, about half a pint.

A little later on in the dinner, Mr. Wopsle
reviewed the sermon with some severity, and
intimated—in the usual hypothetical case of the
Church being "thrown open"—what kind of
sermon he would have given them. After favouring
them with some heads of that discourse, he
remarked that he considered the subject of the
day's homily, ill chosen; which was the less excusable,
he added, when there were so many
subjects "going about."

"True again," said Uncle Pumblechook.
"You've hit it, sir! Plenty of subjects going
about, for them that know how to put salt upon
their tails. That's what's wanted. A man needn't
go far to find a subject, if he's ready with
his salt-box." Mr. Pumblechook added, after
a short interval of reflection, "Look at Pork
alone. There's a subject! If you want a subject,
look at Pork!"

"True, sir. Many a moral for the young,"
returned Mr. Wopsle; and I knew he was going
to lug me in, before he said it; "might be
deduced from that text."