cigar?"

Percival stared. He was not yet familiarized to the eccentric whims of
his friend.

"Hot negus and a cigar!" repeated Ardworth, while a smile, full of
drollery, played round the corners of his lips and twinkled in his deep-
set eyes.

"Are you serious?"

"Not serious; I have been serious enough," and Ardworth sighed, "for the
last three weeks. Who goes 'to Corinth to be sage,' or to the Cider
Cellar to be serious?"

"I subscribe, then, to the negus and cigar," said Percival, smiling; and
he had no cause to repent his compliance as he accompanied Ardworth to
one of the resorts favoured by that strange person in his rare hours of
relaxation.

For, seated at his favourite table, which happened, luckily, to be
vacant, with his head thrown carelessly back, and his negus steaming
before him, John Ardworth continued to pour forth, till the clock struck
three, jest upon jest, pun upon pun, broad drollery upon broad drollery,
without flagging, without intermission, so varied, so copious, so ready,
so irresistible that Percival was transported out of all his melancholy
in enjoying, for the first time in his life, the exuberant gayety of a
grave mind once set free,--all its intellect sparkling into wit, all its
passion rushing into humour. And this was the man he had pitied,
supposed to have no sunny side to his life! How much greater had been