opportunity lost, if they failed to point the conversation at me, every now and then, and stick the point into me. I might have been an unfortunate little bull in a Spanish arena, I got so smartingly touched up by these moral goads.

It began the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr Wopsle said grace with theatrical declamation - as it now appears to me, something like a religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with Richard the Third - and ended with the very proper aspiration that we might be truly grateful. Upon which my sister fixed me with her eye, and said, in a low reproachful voice, `Do you hear that? Be grateful.'

`Especially,' said Mr Pumblechook, `be grateful, boy, to them which brought you up by hand.'

Mrs Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me with a mournful presentiment that I should come to no good, asked, `Why is it that the young are never grateful?' This moral mystery seemed too much for the company until Mr Hubble tersely solved it by saying, `Naterally wicious.' Everybody then murmured `True!' and looked at me in a particularly unpleasant and personal manner.

Joe's station and influence were something feebler (if possible) when there was company, than when there was none. But he always aided and comforted me when he could, in some way of his own, and he always did so at dinner-time by giving me gravy, if there were any. There being plenty of gravy to- day, Joe spooned into my plate, at this point, about half a pint.

A little later on in the dinner, Mr Wopsle reviewed the sermon with some severity, and intimated - in the usual hypothetical case of the Church being `thrown open' - what king of sermon he would have given them. After favouring them with some heads of that discourse, he remarked that he considered the subject of the day's homily, ill-chosen; which was the less excusable, he added, when there were so many subjects `going about.'

`True again,' said Uncle Pumblechook. `You've hit it, sir!Plenty of subjects going about, for them that know how to put salt upon their tails. That's what's wanted. A man needn't go far to find a subject, if he's ready with his salt-box.' Mr Pumblechook added, after a short interval of reflection, `Look at Pork alone. There's a subject! If you want a subject, look at Pork!'

`True, sir. Many a moral for the young,' returned Mr Wopsle; and I knew he was going to lug me in, before he said it; `might be deduced from that text.'

(`You listen to this,' said my sister to me, in a severe parenthesis.)

Joe gave me some more gravy.

`Swine,' pursued Mr Wopsle, in his deepest voice, and pointing his fork at my blushes, as if he were mentioning my christian name; `Swine were the companions of the prodigal. The gluttony of Swine is put before us, as an example to the young.' (I thought this pretty well in him who had been praising up the pork for being so plump and juicy.) `What is detestable in a pig, is more detestable in a boy.'

`Or girl,' suggested Mr Hubble.

`Of course, or girl, Mr Hubble,' assented Mr Wopsle, rather irritably, `but there is no girl present.'

`Besides,' said Mr Pumblechook, turning sharp on me, `think what you've got to be grateful for. If you'd been born a Squeaker--'

`He was, if ever a child was,' said my sister, most emphatically.

Joe gave me some more gravy.