which I abominate)--I mean at that period of his life when the intellect
is pretty acute, though the body is small--namely, when a young
gentleman is about eleven years of age, dining at his father's
table during the holidays, and is requested by his papa to quit the
dinner-table when the ladies retire from it.

Corbleu! I recollect their whole talk as well as if it had been
whispered but yesterday; and can see, after a long dinner, the yellow
summer sun throwing long shadows over the lawn before the dining-room
windows, and my poor mother and her company of ladies sailing away to
the music-room in old Boodle Hall. The Countess Dawdley was the great
lady in our county, a portly lady who used to love crimson satin in
those days, and birds-of-paradise. She was flaxen-haired, and the Regent
once said she resembled one of King Charles's beauties.

When Sir John Todcaster used to begin his famous story of the exciseman
(I shall not tell it here, for very good reasons), my poor mother
used to turn to Lady Dawdley, and give that mystic signal at which all
females rise from their chairs. Tufthunt, the curate, would spring
from his seat, and be sure to be the first to open the door for the
retreating ladies; and my brother Tom and I, though remaining stoutly in
our places, were speedily ejected from them by the governor's invariable
remark, "Tom and George, if you have had QUITE enough of wine, you had
better go and join your mamma." Yonder she marches, heaven bless her!
through the old oak hall (how long the shadows of the antlers are on the
wainscot, and the armor of Rollo Fitz-Boodle looks in the sunset as if
it were emblazoned with rubies)--yonder she marches, stately and tall,
in her invariable pearl-colored tabbinet, followed by Lady Dawdley,
blazing like a flamingo; next comes Lady Emily Tufthunt (she was Lady
Emily Flintskinner), who will not for all the world take precedence of