nt, the tureen slipped and emptied itself on Mrs.
Barton's newly-turned black silk.

'O, horror! Tell Alice to come directly and rub Mrs. Barton's dress,'
said the Countess to the trembling John, carefully abstaining from
approaching the gravy-sprinkled spot on the floor with her own lilac
silk. But Mr. Bridmain, who had a strictly private interest in silks,
good-naturedly jumped up and applied his napkin at once to Mrs. Barton's
gown.

Milly felt a little inward anguish, but no ill-temper, and tried to make
light of the matter for the sake of John as well as others. The Countess
felt inwardly thankful that her own delicate silk had escaped, but threw
out lavish interjections of distress and indignation.

'Dear saint that you are,' she said, when Milly laughed, and suggested
that, as her silk was not very glossy to begin with, the dim patch would
not be much seen; 'you don't mind about these things, I know. Just the
same sort of thing happened to me at the Princess Wengstein's one day, on
a pink satin. I was in an agony. But you are so indifferent to dress; and
well you may be. It is you who make dress pretty, and not dress that
makes you pretty.'

Alice, the buxom lady's-maid, wearing a much better dress than Mrs.
Barton's, now appeared to take Mr. Bridmain's place in retrieving the
mischief, and after a great amount of supplementary rubbing, composure
was restored, and the business of dining was continued. When John was
recounting his accident to the cook in the kitchen, he observed, 'Mrs.
Barton's a hamable woman; I'd a deal sooner ha' throwed the gravy o'er
the Countess's fine gownd. But laws! what tantrums she'd ha' been in
arter the visitors was gone.'

'You'd a deal sooner not ha' throwed it down at all, _I_ should think,'
responded the unsympathetic cook, to whom John did _not_ make love. 'Who
d'you think's to mek gravy anuff, if you're to baste people's gownds wi'
it?'

'Well,' suggested John, humbly, 'you should wet the bottom of the _duree_
a bit, to hold it from slippin'.'

'Wet your granny!' returned the cook; a retort which she probably
regarded in the light of a _reductio ad absurdum_, and which in fact
reduced John to silence.

Later on in the evening, while John was removing the teathings from the
drawing-room, and brushing the crumbs from the table-cloth with an
accompanying hiss, such as he was wont to encourage himself with in
rubbing down Mr. Bridmain's horse, the Rev. Amos Barton drew fro