by little, that this festival was not prospering
as other like festivals had prospered before it.

Looking back at the birthday now, by the
light of what happened afterwards, I am half
inclined to think that the cursed Diamond
must have cast a blight on the whole company.
I plied them well with wine; and, being a
privileged character, followed the unpopular
dishes round the table, and whispered to the
company confidentially, "Please to change
your mind, and try it; for I know it will do
you good." Nine times out of ten they
changed their minds—out of regard for their
old original Betteredge, they were pleased to
say—but all to no purpose. There were gaps
of silence in the talk, as the dinner got on,
that made me feel personally uncomfortable.
When they did use their tongues again, they
used them innocently, in the most unfortunate
manner and to the worst possible purpose.
Mr. Candy, the doctor, for instance, said more
unlucky things than I ever knew him to say
before. Take one sample of the way in which
he went on, and you will understand what I had
to put up with at the side-board, officiating as I
was in the character of a man who had the
prosperity of the festival at heart.

One of our ladies present at dinner was
worthy Mrs. Threadgall, widow of the late
Professor of that name. Talking of her
deceased husband perpetually, this good lady
never mentioned to strangers that he was
deceased. She thought, I suppose, that every
able-bodied adult in England ought to know
as much as that. In one of the gaps of silence,
somebody mentioned the dry and rather nasty
subject of human anatomy; whereupon good
Mrs. Threadgall straightway brought in her
late husband as usual, without mentioning
that he was dead. Anatomy she described
as the Professor's favourite recreation in
his leisure hours. As ill-luck would have it,
Mr. Candy, sitting opposite (who knew nothing
of the deceased gentleman), heard her. Being
the most polite of men, he seized the opportunity
of assisting the Professor's anatomical
amusements on the spot.

"They have got some remarkably fine skeletons
lately at the College of Surgeons," says
Mr. Candy, across the table, in a loud cheerful
voice. "I strongly recommend the Professor,
ma'am, when he next has an hour to spare, to
pay them a visit."

You might have heard a pin fall. The
company (out of respect to the Professor's
memory) all sat speechless. I was behind Mrs.
Threadgall at the time, plying her confidentially
wilh a glass of hock. She dropped her head,
and said in a very low voice, "My beloved
husband is no more."

Unlucky Mr. Candy, hearing nothing, and
miles away from suspecting the truth, went on
across the table louder and politer than ever.

"The Professor may not be aware," says he,
"that the card of a member of the College will
admit him, on any day but Sunday, between the
hours of ten and four."

Mrs. Threadgall dropped her head right into
her tucker, and, in a lower voice still, repeated
the solemn words, "My beloved husband is no
more."

I winked hard at Mr. Candy across the table.
Miss Rachel touched his arm. My lady looked
unutterable things at him. Quite useless! On
he went, with a cordiality that there was no
stopping any how. "I shall be delighted,"
says he, "to send the Professor my card, if you
will oblige me by mentioning his present
address?"

"His present address, sir, is the grave,"
says Mrs. Threadgall, suddenly losing her
temper, and speaking with an emphasis and
fury that made the glasses ring again. "The
Professor has been dead these ten years!"

"Oh, good Heavens!" says Mr. Candy.
Excepting the Bouncers, who burst out laughing,
such a blank now fell on the company,
that they might all have been going the way of
the Professor, and hailing as he did from the
direction of the grave.

So much for Mr. Candy. The rest of them
were nearly as provoking in their different
ways as the doctor himself. When they ought
to have spoken, they didn't speak; or when
they did speak, they were perpetually at cross
purposes. Mr. Godfrey, though so eloquent in
public, declined to exert himself in private.
Whether he was sulky, or whether he was bashful,
after his discomfiture in the rose-garden,
I can't say. He kept all his talk for the private
ear of the lady who sat next to him. She was
one of his committee-women—a spiritually
minded person, with a fine show of collar-bone
and a pretty taste in champagne; liked it dry,
you understand, and plenty of it. Being close
behind these two at the side-board, I can testify,
from what I heard pass between them, that the
company lost a good deal of very improving
conversation, which I caught up while drawing
the corks, and carving the mutton, and so forth.
What they said about their Charities I didn't
hear. When I had time to listen to them, they
had got a long way beyond their women to be
confined, and their women to be rescued, and
were buckling to on serious subjects. Religion
(I understood them to say, between the corks
and the carving) meant love. And love meant
religion. And earth was heaven a little the
worse for wear. And heaven was earth, done
up again to look like new. Earth had some
very objectionable people in it; but, to make
amends for that, all the women in heaven would
be members of a prodigious committee that
never quarrelled, with all the men in attendance
on them as ministering angels. Beautiful!
beautiful! But why the mischief did Mr.
Godfrey keep it all to his lady and
himself?

Mr. Franklin again—surely, you will say,
Mr. Franklin stirred the company up into
making a pleasant evening of it?

Nothing of the sort! He had quite
recovered himself, and he was in wonderful
force and spirits, Penelope having informed