to the
basket, and took a long inspiration at the lid; the grin upon his
withered face expanded in the process, as if he were inhaling laughing
gas.

"Ah! It's very nice," said Toby. "It ain't--I suppose it ain't
Polonies?"

"No, no, no!" cried Meg, delighted. "Nothing like Polonies!"

"No," said Toby, after another sniff. "It's--it's mellower than
Polonies. It's very nice. It improves every moment. It's too decided for
Trotters. Ain't it?"

Meg was in ecstasy. He could _not_ have gone wider of the mark than
Trotters--except Polonies.

"Liver?" said Toby, communing with himself. "No. There's a mildness
about it that don't answer to liver. Pettitoes? No. It an't faint enough
for pettitoes. It wants the stringiness of Cocks' heads. And I know it
an't sausages. I'll tell you what it is. It's chitterlings!"

"No, it an't!" cried Meg, in a burst of delight "No, it an't!"

"Why, what am I a thinking of!" said Toby, suddenly recovering a
position as near the perpendicular as it was possible for him to assume.
"I shall forget my own name next. It's tripe!"

Tripe it was; and Meg, in high joy, protested he should say, in half a
minute more, it was the best tripe ever stewed.

"And so," said Meg, busying herself exultingly with her basket; "I'll
lay the cloth at once, father; for I have brought the tripe in a basin,
and tied the basin up in a pocket-handkerchief; and if I like to be
proud for once, and spread that for a cloth, and call it a cloth,
there's no law to prevent me; is there father?"

"Not that I know of, my dear," said Toby. "But they're always a bringing
up some new law or other."

"And according to what I was reading you in the paper the other day,
father; what the Judge said, you know; we poor people are supposed to
know them all. Ha, ha! What a mistake! My goodness me, how clever they
think us!"

"Yes, my dear," cried Trotty; "and they'd be very fond of any one of us
that _did_ know 'em all. He'd grow fat upon the work he'd get, that man,
and be popular with the gentlefolks in his neighborhood. Very much so!"

"He'd eat his dinner with an appetite, whoever he was, if it smelt like
this," said Meg, cheerfully. "Make haste, for there's a potato besides.
Where will you dine, father? On the Post, or on the Steps? Dear, dear,
how grand we are. Two places to choose from!"

"The steps to day, my Pet," said Trotty. "Steps in dry weather. Post in
wet. There's a great conveniency in the steps at all times,