the wine at breakfast. The poor relations had kept in bed all day, with
the view of attaining the same happy consummation, but, as they had been
unsuccessful, they stopped there. Mr. Weller kept the domestics in a
state of perpetual hilarity; and the fat boy divided his time into small
alternate allotments of eating and sleeping.

The dinner was as hearty an affair as the breakfast, and was quite as
noisy, without the tears. Then came the dessert and some more toasts.
Then came the tea and coffee; and then, the ball.

The best sitting-room at Manor Farm was a good, long, dark-panelled room
with a high chimney-piece, and a capacious chimney, up which you could
have driven one of the new patent cabs, wheels and all. At the upper end
of the room, seated in a shady bower of holly and evergreens were the
two best fiddlers, and the only harp, in all Muggleton. In all sorts
of recesses, and on all kinds of brackets, stood massive old silver
candlesticks with four branches each. The carpet was up, the candles
burned bright, the fire blazed and crackled on the hearth, and merry
voices and light-hearted laughter rang through the room. If any of the
old English yeomen had turned into fairies when they died, it was just
the place in which they would have held their revels.

If anything could have added to the interest of this agreeable scene, it
would have been the remarkable fact of Mr. Pickwick's appearing without
his gaiters, for the first time within the memory of his oldest friends.

'You mean to dance?' said Wardle.

'Of course I do,' replied Mr. Pickwick. 'Don't you see I am dressed
for the purpose?' Mr. Pickwick called attention to his speckled silk
stockings, and smartly tied pumps.

'YOU in silk stockings!' exclaimed Mr. Tupman jocosely.

'And why not, sir--why not?' said Mr. Pickwick, turning warmly upon
him. 'Oh, of course there is no reason why you shouldn't wear them,'
responded Mr. Tupman.

'I imagine not, sir--I imagine not,' said Mr. Pickwick, in a very
peremptory tone.

Mr. Tupman had contemplated a laugh, but he found it was a serious
matter; so he looked grave, and said they were a pretty pattern.

'I hope they are,' said Mr. Pickwick, fixing his eyes upon his friend.
'You see nothing extraordinary in the stockings, AS stockings, I trust,
Sir?'

'Certainly not. Oh, certainly not,' replied Mr. Tupman. He walked away;
and Mr. Pickwick's countenance resumed its customary benign expression.

'We are al