"What is it about candlesticks?" said I to Mr. Potiphar. "Perhaps
Mr. Cheese finds gas too bright for his eyes; and that's his
misfortune, not his fault.

"Polly," said Mr. Potiphar, who _will_ call me Polly, although it
sounds so very vulgar, "please not to meddle with things you don't
understand. You may have Cream Cheese to dinner as much as you
choose, but I will not have him in the pulpit of my church."

The same day Mr. Cheese happened in about lunch-time, and I asked him
if his eyes were really weak.

"Not at all," said he, "why do you ask?"

Then I told him that I had heard he was so fond of candlesticks.

Ah! Caroline, you should have seen him then. He stopped in the midst
of pouring out a glass of Mr. P.'s best old port, and holding the
decanter in one hand, and the glass in the other, he looked so
beautifully sad, and said in that sweet low voice:

"Dear Mrs. Potiphar, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the
church." Then he filled up his glass, and drank the wine off with such
a mournful, resigned air, and wiped his lips so gently with his
cambric handkerchief (I saw that it was a hem-stitch), that I had no
voice to ask him to take a bit of the cold chicken, which he did,
however, without my asking him. But when he said in the same low
voice, "A little more breast, dear Mrs. Potiphar," I was obliged to
run into the drawing room for a moment, to recover myself.