by this time broiled.

'We don't have meat every day, Mr. Goldmore,' he continued, 'and it's a
treat to me to get a dinner like this. You little know, you gentlemen of
England, who live at home at ease, what hardships briefless barristers
endure.'

'Gracious mercy!' says Mr. Goldmore.

'Where's the half-and-half? Fanny, go over to the 'Keys' and get the
beer. Here's sixpence.' And what was our astonishment when Fanny got up
as if to go!

'Gracious mercy! let ME,' cries Goldmore.

'Not for worlds, my dear sir. She's used to it. They wouldn't serve
you as well as they serve her. Leave her alone. Law bless you!' Raymond
said, with astounding composure. And Mrs. Gray left the room, and
actually came back with a tray on which there was a pewter flagon of
beer. Little Polly (to whom, at her christening, I had the honour
of presenting a silver mug EX OFFICIO) followed with a couple of
tobacco-pipes, and the queerest roguish look in her round little chubby
face.

'Did you speak to Tapling about the gin, Fanny, my dear?' Gray asked,
after bidding Polly put the pipes on the chimney-piece, which that
little person had some difficulty in reaching. 'The last was turpentine,
and even your brewing didn't make good punch of it.'

'You would hardly suspect, Goldmore, that my wife, a Harley Baker, would
ever make gin-punch? I think my mother-in-law would commit suicide if
she saw her.'

'Don't be always laughing at mamma, Raymond,' says Mrs. Gray.

'Well, well, she wouldn't die, and I DON'T wish she would. And you don't
make gin-punch, and you don't like it either and--Goldmore do you drink
your beer out of the glass, or out of the pewter?'

'Gracious mercy!' ejaculates Croesus once more, as little Polly, taking
the pot with both her little bunches of hands, offers it, smiling, to
that astonished Director.

And so, in a word, the dinner commenced, and was presently ended in a
similar fashion. Gray pursued his unfortunate guest with the most queer
and outrageous description of his struggles, misery, and poverty. He
described how he cleaned the knives when they were first married; and
how he used to drag the children in a little cart; how his wife could
toss pancakes; and what parts of his dress she made. He told Tibbits,
his clerk (who was in fact the functionary who had brought the beer from
the public-house, which Mrs. Fanny had fetched from the neighbouring
apartment)--to fetch 'the bottle of port-wine,' when the dinner