o. But you wouldn't be affected if you saw the undertaker in
weepers and a black cloak!"

"Indeed, but I should, sir!" says Mrs. Lambert; "and so, I promise you,
would any daughter of mine."

"Perhaps we might find weepers of our own, Mr. Warrington," says Theo,
"in such a case."

"Would you?" cries George, and his cheeks and Theo's simultaneously
flushed up with red; I suppose because they both saw Hetty's bright
young eyes watching them.

"The elder writers understood but little of the pathetic," remarked Mr.
Spencer, the Temple wit.

"What do you think of Sophocles and Antigone?" calls out Mr. John
Lambert.

"Faith, our wits trouble themselves little about him, unless an Oxford
gentleman comes to remind us of him! I did not mean to go back farther
than Mr. Shakspeare, who, as you will all agree, does not understand
the elegant and pathetic as well as the moderns. Has he ever approached
Belvidera, or Monimia, or Jane Shore; or can you find in his comic
female characters the elegance of Congreve?" and the Templar offered
snuff to the right and left.

"I think Mr. Spencer himself must have tried his hand?" asks some one.

"Many gentlemen of leisure have. Mr. Garrick, I own, has had a piece of
mine and returned it."

"And I confess that I have four acts of a play in one of my boxes," says
George.

"I'll be bound to say it's as good as any of 'em," whispers Harry to his
neighbour.

"Is it a tragedy or a comedy?" asks Mrs. Lambert.

"Oh, a tragedy, and two or three dreadful murders at least!" George
replies.

"Let us play it, and let the audience look to their eyes! Yet my chief
humour is for a tyrant," says the General.

"The tragedy, the tragedy! Go and fetch the tragedy this moment,
Gumbo!" calls Mrs. Lambert to the black. Gumbo makes a low bow and says,
"Tragedy? yes, madam."

"In the great cowskin trunk, Gumbo," George says, gravely.

Gumbo bows and says, "Yes, sir," with still superior gravity.

"But my tragedy is at the bottom of I don't know how much linen,
packages, books, and boots, Hetty."

"Never mind, let us have it, and fling the linen out of window!" cries
Miss Hetty.

"And the great cowskin trunk is at our agent's at Bristol: so Gumbo must
get post-horses, and we can keep it up till he returns the day after
to-morrow," says George.

The ladies groaned a comical "Oh!" and papa, perhaps more seriously,
said, "Let us be thankful for the escape. Let us be thinking of going
home too.