und with a most bewitching
smile, 'how do you do, Joe?'

'Joe,' said Emily, 'you're a very good boy; I won't forget you, Joe.'

'Joe,' said Mr. Snodgrass, advancing to the astonished youth, and
seizing his hand, 'I didn't know you before. There's five shillings for
you, Joe!"

'I'll owe you five, Joe,' said Arabella, 'for old acquaintance sake,
you know;' and another most captivating smile was bestowed upon the
corpulent intruder.

The fat boy's perception being slow, he looked rather puzzled at first
to account for this sudden prepossession in his favour, and stared about
him in a very alarming manner. At length his broad face began to show
symptoms of a grin of proportionately broad dimensions; and then,
thrusting half-a-crown into each of his pockets, and a hand and wrist
after it, he burst into a horse laugh: being for the first and only time
in his existence.

'He understands us, I see,' said Arabella. 'He had better have something
to eat, immediately,' remarked Emily.

The fat boy almost laughed again when he heard this suggestion. Mary,
after a little more whispering, tripped forth from the group and said--

'I am going to dine with you to-day, sir, if you have no objection.'

'This way,' said the fat boy eagerly. 'There is such a jolly meat-pie!'

With these words, the fat boy led the way downstairs; his pretty
companion captivating all the waiters and angering all the chambermaids
as she followed him to the eating-room.

There was the meat-pie of which the youth had spoken so feelingly, and
there were, moreover, a steak, and a dish of potatoes, and a pot of
porter.

'Sit down,' said the fat boy. 'Oh, my eye, how prime! I am SO hungry.'

Having apostrophised his eye, in a species of rapture, five or six
times, the youth took the head of the little table, and Mary seated
herself at the bottom.

'Will you have some of this?' said the fat boy, plunging into the pie up
to the very ferules of the knife and fork.

'A little, if you please,' replied Mary.

The fat boy assisted Mary to a little, and himself to a great deal, and
was just going to begin eating when he suddenly laid down his knife and
fork, leaned forward in his chair, and letting his hands, with the knife
and fork in them, fall on his knees, said, very slowly--

'I say! How nice you look!'

This was said in an admiring manner, and was, so far, gratifying; but
still there was enough of the cannibal in the young gentleman's eyes to
ren