uddenly 'The fellow isn't
a gentleman!' struck the attention of Mr. Raikes with alarming force.

Raikes--and it may be because he knew he could do more than Evan in this
respect--vociferated: 'I'm the son of a gentleman!'

Drummond, from the head of the table, saw that a diversion was
imperative. He leaned forward, and with a look of great interest said:

'Are you? Pray, never disgrace your origin, then.'

'If the choice were offered me, I think I would rather have known his
father,' said the smiling fellow, yawning, and rocking on his chair.

'You would, possibly, have been exceedingly intimate--with his right
foot,' said Raikes.

The other merely remarked: 'Oh! that is the language of the son of a
gentleman.'

The tumult of irony, abuse, and retort, went on despite the efforts of
Drummond and the chairman. It was odd; for at Farmer Broadmead's end of
the table, friendship had grown maudlin: two were seen in a drowsy
embrace, with crossed pipes; and others were vowing deep amity, and
offering to fight the man that might desire it.

'Are ye a friend? or are ye a foe?' was heard repeatedly, and
consequences to the career of the respondent, on his choice of
affirmatives to either of these two interrogations, emphatically
detailed.

It was likewise asked, in reference to the row at the gentlemen's end:
'Why doan' they stand up and have 't out?'

'They talks, they speechifies--why doan' they fight for 't, and then be
friendly?'

'Where's the yarmony, Mr. Chair, I axes--so please ye?' sang out Farmer
Broadmead.

'Ay, ay! Silence!' the chairman called.

Mr. Raikes begged permission to pronounce his excuses, but lapsed into a
lamentation for the squandering of property bequeathed to him by his
respected uncle, and for which--as far as he was intelligible--he
persisted in calling the three offensive young cricketers opposite to
account.

Before he could desist, Harmony, no longer coy, burst on the assembly
from three different sources. 'A Man who is given to Liquor,' soared
aloft with 'The Maid of sweet Seventeen,' who participated in the
adventures of 'Young Molly and the Kicking Cow'; while the guests
selected the chorus of the song that first demanded it.

Evan probably thought that Harmony was herself only when she came single,
or he was wearied of his fellows, and wished to gaze a moment on the
skies whose arms were over and around his young beloved. He went to the
window and threw it up, and feasted hi