, when she could--and
what had she but the vegetables to boil?--crowded round him, and
listened with wonder as he talked of the great families as he had lived
with. That man, as they saw him there before them, had been cab-boy
to Lord Tantallan, valet to the Earl of Bareacres, and groom of the
chambers to the Duchess Dowager of Fitzbattleaxe. Oh, it was delightful
to hear Mr. Truncheon!

VI.

On the great, momentous, stupendous day of the dinner, my beloved female
reader may imagine that Fitzroy Timmins was sent about his business at
an early hour in the morning, while the women began to make preparations
to receive their guests. "There will be no need of your going to
Fubsby's," Mrs. Gashleigh said to him, with a look that drove him out
of doors. "Everything that we require has been ordered THERE! You will
please to be back here at six o'clock, and not sooner: and I presume you
will acquiesce in my arrangements about the WINE?"

"O yes, mamma," said the prostrate son-in-law.

"In so large a party--a party beyond some folks MEANS--expensive WINES
are ABSURD. The light sherry at 26s., the champagne at 42s.; and you are
not to go beyond 36s. for the claret and port after dinner. Mind, coffee
will be served; and you come up stairs after two rounds of the claret."

"Of course, of course," acquiesced the wretch; and hurried out of the
house to his chambers, and to discharge the commissions with which the
womankind had intrusted him.

As for Mrs. Gashleigh, you might have heard her bawling over the house
the whole day long. That admirable woman was everywhere: in the kitchen
until the arrival of Truncheon, before whom she would not retreat
without a battle; on the stairs; in Fitzroy's dressing-room; and in
Fitzroy minor's nursery, to whom she gave a dose of her own composition,
while the nurse was sent out on a pretext to make purchases of garnish
for the dishes to be served for the little dinner. Garnish for the
dishes! As if the folks at Fubsby's could not garnish dishes better than
Gashleigh, with her stupid old-world devices of laurel-leaves, parsley,
and cut turnips! Why, there was not a dish served that day that was not
covered over with skewers, on which truffles, crayfish, mushrooms,
and forced-meat were impaled. When old Gashleigh went down with her
barbarian bunches of holly and greens to stick about the meats, even the
cook saw their incongruity, and, at Truncheon's orders, flung the whole
shrubbery