g, but she thought you were Vegetarians."

After helping his young friend to a mutton-chop, Kenelm helped himself,
and replied gravely, "Tell your mistress that if she had only given
us vegetables, I should have eaten you. Tell her that though man is
partially graminivorous, he is principally carnivorous. Tell her that
though a swine eats cabbages and such like, yet where a swine can get
a baby, it eats the baby. Tell her," continued Kenelm (now at his third
chop), "that there is no animal that in digestive organs more resembles
man than a swine. Ask her if there is any baby in the house; if so, it
would be safe for the baby to send up some more chops."

As the acutest observer could rarely be quite sure when Kenelm
Chillingly was in jest or in earnest, the parlour-maid paused a moment
and attempted a pale smile. Kenelm lifted his dark eyes, unspeakably sad
and profound, and said mournfully, "I should be so sorry for the baby.
Bring the chops!" The parlour-maid vanished. The boy laid down his
knife and fork, and looked fixedly and inquisitively on Kenelm. Kenelm,
unheeding the look, placed the last chop on the boy's plate.

"No more," cried the boy, impulsively, and returned the chop to the
dish. "I have dined: I have had enough."

"Little boy, you lie," said Kenelm; "you have not had enough to keep
body and soul together. Eat that chop or I shall thrash you: whatever I
say I do."

Somehow or other the boy felt quelled; he ate the chop in silence, again
looked at Kenelm's face, and said to himself, "I am afraid."

The parlour-maid here entered with a fresh supply of chops and a dish of
bacon and eggs, soon followed by a rice-pudding baked in a tin dish, and
of size sufficient to have nourished a charity school. When the repast
was finished, Kenelm seemed to forget the dangerous properties of the
carnivorous animal; and stretching himself indolently out, appeared
to be as innocently ruminative as the most domestic of animals
graminivorous.

Then said the boy, rather timidly, "May I ask you another favour?"

"Is it to knock down another uncle, or to steal another gig and cob?"

"No, it is very simple: it is merely to find out the address of a friend
here; and when found to give him a note from me."

"Does the commission press? 'After dinner, rest a while,' saith the
proverb; and proverbs are so wise that no one can guess the author
of them. They are supposed to be fragments of the philosophy of the
antediluvian