py and my friend Stuart,
from the head and foot respectively of their dinner-table, around which
were assembled my wife, my niece Lizzie Gordon, an elderly spinster
named Miss Eve Flouncer, a Miss Martha Puff, (niece to Miss Flouncer), a
baronet named Sir Richard Doles, my son Gildart, and Kenneth Stuart.

I was seated beside Miss Peppy, opposite to Sir Richard Doles, who was
one of the slowest, dullest, stupidest men I ever met with. He appeared
to me to have been born without any intellect. When he told a story
there was no end to it, indeed there seldom was anything worthy the name
of a beginning to it, and it never by the remotest chance had any point.

In virtue of his rank, not his capacity of course, Sir Richard was in
great demand in Wreckumoft. He was chairman at every public meeting;
honorary member of every society; a director in the bank, the insurance
company, the railway, the poorhouse, and the Sailors' Home; in all of
which positions and institutions he was a positive nuisance, because of
his insane determination to speak as long as possible, when he had not
the remotest notion of what he wished to say, so that business was in
his presence brought almost to a dead lock. Yet Sir Richard was
tolerated; nay, courted and toadied, because of his title.

My wife was seated opposite to Miss Eve Flouncer, who was one of the
strong-minded women. Indeed, I think it is but just to say of her that
she was one of the strongest-minded women in the town. In her presence
the strength of Mrs Bingley's mind dwindled down to comparative
weakness. In form she was swan-like, undulatory, so to speak. Her
features were _prononce_; nose, aquiline; eyes, piercing; hair, black as
night, and in long ringlets.

Miss Flouncer was, as I have said, an elderly spinster. Sir Richard was
an elderly bachelor. Miss Flouncer thought of this, and often sighed.
Sir Richard didn't think of it, and never sighed, except when, having
finished a good dinner, he felt that he could eat no more. By the way,
he also sighed at philanthropic meetings when cases of distress were
related, such as sudden bereavement, coupled, perhaps, with sickness and
deep poverty. But Sir Richard's sighs were all his contributions to the
cause of suffering humanity. Sometimes, indeed, he gave it his
blessing, though it would have puzzled the deepest philosopher to have
said what that consisted in, but he never gave it his prayers, for this
reason, that he