boy, you have probably not read the poems of Robert Burns, and have
certainly not read the 'Confessions' of Saint Augustine, take my word
for it, that both those personages were very good fellows; and with a
little difference of training and experience, Burns might have written
the 'Confessions' and Augustine the poems. Powers above! I am
starving. What did you order for dinner, and when is it to appear?"

The boy, who had opened to an enormous width a naturally large pair of
hazel eyes, while his tall companion in fustian trousers and Belcher
neckcloth spoke thus patronizingly of Robert Burns and Saint
Augustine, now replied, with rather a deprecatory and shamefaced
aspect, "I am sorry I was not thinking of dinner. I was not so
mindful of you as I ought to have been. The landlady asked me what we
would have. I said, 'What you like;' and the landlady muttered
something about--" here the boy hesitated.

"Yes. About what? Mutton-chops?"

"No. Cauliflowers and rice-pudding."

Kenelm Chillingly never swore, never raged. Where ruder beings of
human mould swore or raged, he vented displeasure in an expression of
countenance so pathetically melancholic and lugubrious that it would
have melted the heart of an Hyrcanian tiger. He turned his
countenance now on the boy, and murmuring "Cauliflower!--Starvation!"
sank into one of the cane-bottomed chairs, and added quietly, "so much
for human gratitude."

The boy was evidently smitten to the heart by the bitter sweetness of
this reproach. There were almost tears in his Voice, as he said