“We call it Horse,” said Mr Podsnap, with forbearance. “In England, Angleterre, England, We Aspirate the ‘H,’ and We Say ‘Horse.’ Only our Lower Classes Say ‘Orse!’ ”

“Pardon,” said the foreign gentleman; ‘I am alwiz wrong!”

“Our Language,” said Mr Podsnap, with a gracious consciousness of being always right, “is Difficult. Ours is a Copious Language, and Trying to Strangers. I will not Pursue my Question.”

But the lumpy gentleman, unwilling to give it up, again madly said, “ESKER,” and again spake no more.

“It merely referred,” Mr Podsnap explained, with a sense of meritorious proprietorship, “to Our Constitution, Sir. We Englishmen are Very Proud of our Constitution, Sir. It Was Bestowed Upon Us By Providence. No Other Country is so Favoured as This Country.”

“And ozer countries? —” the foreign gentleman was beginning, when Mr Podsnap put him right again.

“We do not say Ozer; we say Other: the letters are ‘T’ and ‘H;’ You say Tay and Aish, You Know; (still with clemency). The sound is ‘th’ — ‘th!’ ”

“And other countries,” said the foreign gentleman. “They do how?”

“They do, Sir,” returned Mr Podsnap, gravely shaking his head; “they do — I am sorry to be obliged to say it — as they do.”

“It was a little particular of Providence,” said the foreign gentleman, laughing; “for the frontier is not large.”

“Undoubtedly,” assented Mr Podsnap; “But So it is. It was the Charter of the Land. This Island was Blest, Sir, to the Direct Exclusion of such Other Countries as — as there may happen to be. And if we were all Englishmen present, I would say,” added Mr Podsnap, looking round upon his compatriots, and sounding solemnly with his theme, “that there is in the Englishman a combination of qualities, a modesty, an independence, a responsibility, a repose, combined with an absence of everything calculated to call a blush into the cheek of a young person, which one would seek in vain among the Nations of the Earth.”

Having delivered this little summary, Mr Podsnap’s face flushed, as he thought of the remote possibility of its being at all qualified by any prejudiced citizen of any other country; and, with his favourite right-arm flourish, he put the rest of Europe and the whole of Asia, Africa, and America nowhere.

The audience were much edified by this passage of words; and Mr Podsnap, feeling that he was in rather remarkable force to-day, became smiling and conversational.

“Has anything more been heard, Veneering,” he inquired, “of the lucky legatee?”

“Nothing more,” returned Veneering, “than that he has come into possession of the property. I am told people now call him The Golden Dustman. I mentioned to you some time ago, I think, that the young lady whose intended husband was murdered is daughter to a clerk of mine?”

“Yes, you told me that,” said Podsnap; “and by-the-bye, I wish you would tell it again here, for it’s a curious coincidence — curious that the first news of the discovery should have been brought straight to your table (when I was there), and curious that one of your people should have been so nearly interested in it. Just relate that, will you?”

Veneering was more than ready to do it, for he had prospered exceedingly upon the Harmon Murder, and had turned the social distinction it conferred upon him to the account of making several dozen of bran-new bosom-friends. Indeed, such another lucky hit would almost have set him up in that way to his satisfaction. So, addressing himself to the most desirable of his neighbours, while Mrs Veneering secured the next most desirable, he plunged into the case, and emerged from it twenty minutes afterwards