ther), and how playfully she
digs the handle of a fork into the arm with which he detains her, by way
of reply.

Jane is no bad hand at repartees, and showers them about, with a degree
of liberality and total absence of reserve or constraint, which
occasionally excites no small amazement in the minds of strangers. She
cuts jokes with Nicholas, too, but looks up to him with a great deal of
respect--the immovable stolidity with which Nicholas receives the
aforesaid jokes, and looks on, at certain pastoral friskings and rompings
(Jane's only recreations, and they are very innocent too) which
occasionally take place in the passage, is not the least amusing part of
his character.

The two persons who are seated at the table in the corner, at the farther
end of the room, have been constant guests here, for many years past; and
one of them has feasted within these walls, many a time, with the most
brilliant characters of a brilliant period. He has gone up to the other
House since then; the greater part of his boon companions have shared
Yorick's fate, and his visits to Bellamy's are comparatively few.

If he really be eating his supper now, at what hour can he possibly have
dined! A second solid mass of rump-steak has disappeared, and he eat the
first in four minutes and three quarters, by the clock over the window.
Was there ever such a personification of Falstaff! Mark the air with
which he gloats over that Stilton, as he removes the napkin which has
been placed beneath his chin to catch the superfluous gravy of the steak,
and with what gusto he imbibes the porter which has been fetched,
expressly for him, in the pewter pot. Listen to the hoarse sound of that
voice, kept down as it is by layers of solids, and deep draughts of rich
wine, and tell us if you ever saw such a perfect picture of a regular
_gourmand_; and whether he is not exactly the man whom you would pitch
upon as having been the partner of Sheridan's parliamentary carouses, the
volunteer driver of the hackney-coach that took him home, and the
involuntary upsetter of the whole party?

What an amusing contrast between his voice and appearance, and that of
the spare, squeaking old man, who sits at the same table, and who,
elevating a little cracked bantam sort of voice to its highest pitch,
invokes damnation upon his own eyes or somebody else's at the
commencement of every sentence he utters. 'The Captain,' as they call
him, is a very old frequenter of B