ran up to me, and kissed me on the forehead (although my hair was all
dressed for Mrs. Gnu's dinner), and went out of the house. He hasn't
said much to me since, but he speaks very gently when he does speak,
and sometimes I catch him looking at me in such a singular way, so
half mournful, that Mr. Cheese's eyes don't seem so very sad after
all.

However, to return to the party, I believe nothing else was injured
except the curtains in the front drawing-room, which were so smeared
with ice-cream and oyster gravy, that we must get new ones; and the
cover of my porcelain tureen was broken by the servant, though the man
said he didn't really mean to do it, and I could say nothing; and a
party of young men, after the German Cotillion, did let fall that
superb cut-glass Claret, and shivered it, with a dozen of the
delicately engraved straw-stems that stood upon the waiter. That was
all, I believe--oh! except that fine "Dresden Gallery," the most
splendid book I ever saw, full of engravings of the great pictures in
Dresden, Vienna, and the other Italian towns, and which was sent to
Mr. P. by an old friend, an artist, whom he had helped along when he
was very poor. Somebody unfortunately tipped over a bottle of claret
that stood upon the table, (I am sure I don't know how it got there,
though Mr. P. says Gauche Boosey knows,) and it lay soaking into the
book, so that almost every picture has a claret stain, which looks so
funny. I am very sorry, I am sure, but as I tell Mr. P., it's no use
crying for spilt milk. I was telling Mr. Boosey of it at the Gnus'
dinner. He laughed very much, and when I said that a good many of the
faces were sadly stained, he said in his droll way, "You ought to call
it _L'Opera di Bordeaux; Le Domino rouge._" I supposed it was
something funny, so I laughed a good deal. He said to me later: "Shall
I pour a little claret into your book--I mean into your glass?"