but I can not help it. And
going along, I smell hungry smells coming out of deep holes with a
plate at the top. Hungry I mean to a man who has known what absolute
starvation is--when a man would thank God for a blue-bottle fly who had
taken his own nip any where. When I see the young fellows at the clubs
pick this, and poke that, and push away the other, may I be d----d--my
dear, I beg your pardon. Cabby, to the 'Grilled Bone and Scolloped
Cockle,' at the bottom of St. Ventricle Lane, you know."

This place seemed, from what the Major said, to have earned repute for
something special, something esteemed by the very clever people, and
only to be found in true virtue here. And he told me that luxury and
self-indulgence were the greatest sins of the present age, and how he
admired a man who came here to protest against Epicureans, by dining
(liquors not included) for the sum of three and sixpence.

All this, no doubt, was wise and right; but I could not attend to it
properly now, and he might take me where he would, and have all the
talking to himself, according to his practice. And I might not even have
been able to say what this temple of bones and cockles was like, except
for a little thing which happened there. The room, at the head of
a twisting staircase, was low and dark, and furnished almost like a
farmhouse kitchen. It had no carpet, nor even a mat, but a floor of
black timber, and a ceiling colored blue, with stars and comets, and a
full moon near the fire-place. On either side of the room stood narrow
tables endwise to the walls, inclosed with high-backed seats like
settles, forming thus a double set of little stalls or boxes, with
scarcely space enough between for waiters, more urgent than New York
firemen, to push their steaming and breathless way.

"Square or round, miss?" said one of them to me as soon as the Major had
set me on a bench, and before my mind had time to rally toward criticism
of the knives and forks, which deprecated any such ordeal; and he
cleverly whipped a stand for something dirty, over something still
dirtier, on the cloth.

"I don't understand what you mean," I replied to his highly zealous
aspect, while the Major sat smiling dryly at my ignorance, which vexed
me. "I have never received such a question before. Major Hockin, will
you kindly answer him?"

"Square," said the Major; "square for both." And the waiter, with a
glance of pity at me, hurried off to carry out his order.

"E