you, I make no doubt, may eat them in safety."

Wormwood was a tall, meagre man, with a neck a yard long. Davison was, as
I have said, short and fat, and made without any apparent neck at all--
only head and shoulders, like a cod-fish.

Poor Mr. Davison turned perfectly white; he fidgeted about in his chair;
cast a look of the most deadly fear and aversion at the fatal dish he had
been so attentive to before; and, muttering "apoplectic," closed his
lips, and did not open them again all dinner-time.

Mr. Wormwood's object was effected. Two people were silenced and
uncomfortable, and a sort of mist hung over the spirits of the whole
party. The dinner went on and off, like all other dinners; the ladies
retired, and the men drank, and talked indecorums. Mr. Davison left the
room first, in order to look out the word "truffle," in the
Encyclopaedia; and Lord Vincent and I went next, "lest (as my companion
characteristically observed) that d--d Wormwood should, if we stayed a
moment longer, 'send us weeping to our beds.'"




CHAPTER IV.

Oh! la belle chose que la Poste!
--Lettres de Sevigne.

Ay--but who is it?
--As you Like it.