ll as I like anything, R. W." The stately woman would
then, with a meritorious appearance of devoting herself to the general
good, pursue her dinner as if she were feeding somebody else on high
public grounds.

Bella had brought dessert and two bottles of wine, thus shedding
unprecedented splendor on the occasion. Mrs. Wilfer did the honors of
the first glass by proclaiming: "R. W., I drink to you."

"Thank you, my dear. And I to you."

"Pa and Ma!" said Bella.

"Permit me," Mrs. Wilfer interposed, with outstretched glove. "No. I
think not. I drank to your Pa. If, however, you insist on including
me, I can in gratitude offer no objection."

"Why, Lor, Ma," interposed Lavvy the bold, "isn't it the day that made
you and Pa one and the same? I have no patience."

"By whatever other circumstances the day may be marked, it is not the
day, Lavinia, on which I will allow a child of mine to pounce upon me.
I beg--nay, command!--that you will not pounce. R. W., it is
appropriate to recall that it is for you to command and for me to
obey."

"It is your house, and you are master at your own table. Both our
healths!" Drinking the toast with tremendous stiffness.

"I really am a little afraid, my dear," hinted the cherub meekly,
"that you are not enjoying yourself?"

"On the contrary," returned Mrs. Wilfer, "quite so. Why should I not?"

"I thought, my dear, that perhaps your face might--"

"My face might be a martyrdom, but what would that import, or who
should know it if I smiled?"

And she did smile; manifestly freezing the blood of Mr. George Sampson
by so doing. For that young gentleman, catching her smiling eye, was
so very much appalled by its expression as to cast in his thoughts
concerning what he had done to bring it down upon himself.

"The mind naturally falls," said Mrs. Wilfer, "shall I say into a
reverie, or shall I say into a retrospect? on a day like this."

Lavvy, sitting with defiantly folded arms, replied (but not audibly),
"For goodness' sake say whichever of the two you like best, Ma, and
get it over."

"The mind," pursued Mrs. Wilfer in an oratorical manner, "naturally
reverts to Papa and Mama--I here allude to my parents--at a period
before the earliest dawn of this day. I was considered tall; perhaps I
was. Papa and Mama were unquestionably tall. I have rarely seen a
finer woman than my mother; never than my father."

The irrepressible Lavvy remarked aloud, "Whatever grandpapa was, he
wa