had been removed from the bannisters;
there were not more than two pairs of pattens on the street-door mat;
and a kitchen candle, with a very long snuff, burned cheerfully on the
ledge of the staircase window. Mr. Bob Sawyer had himself purchased the
spirits at a wine vaults in High Street, and had returned home preceding
the bearer thereof, to preclude the possibility of their delivery at
the wrong house. The punch was ready-made in a red pan in the bedroom;
a little table, covered with a green baize cloth, had been borrowed from
the parlour, to play at cards on; and the glasses of the establishment,
together with those which had been borrowed for the occasion from the
public-house, were all drawn up in a tray, which was deposited on the
landing outside the door.

Notwithstanding the highly satisfactory nature of all these
arrangements, there was a cloud on the countenance of Mr. Bob Sawyer, as
he sat by the fireside. There was a sympathising expression, too, in the
features of Mr. Ben Allen, as he gazed intently on the coals, and a tone
of melancholy in his voice, as he said, after a long silence--'Well, it
is unlucky she should have taken it in her head to turn sour, just on
this occasion. She might at least have waited till to-morrow.'

'That's her malevolence--that's her malevolence,' returned Mr. Bob
Sawyer vehemently. 'She says that if I can afford to give a party I
ought to be able to pay her confounded "little bill."' 'How long has it
been running?' inquired Mr. Ben Allen. A bill, by the bye, is the most
extraordinary locomotive engine that the genius of man ever produced.
It would keep on running during the longest lifetime, without ever once
stopping of its own accord.

'Only a quarter, and a month or so,' replied Mr. Bob Sawyer.

Ben Allen coughed hopelessly, and directed a searching look between the
two top bars of the stove.

'It'll be a deuced unpleasant thing if she takes it into her head to
let out, when those fellows are here, won't it?' said Mr. Ben Allen at
length.

'Horrible,' replied Bob Sawyer, 'horrible.' A low tap was heard at the
room door. Mr. Bob Sawyer looked expressively at his friend, and bade
the tapper come in; whereupon a dirty, slipshod girl in black cotton
stockings, who might have passed for the neglected daughter of a
superannuated dustman in very reduced circumstances, thrust in her head,
and said--

'Please, Mister Sawyer, Missis Raddle wants to speak to you.'

Before Mr