“Pa and Ma!” said Bella.

“Permit me,” Mrs. Wilfer interposed with outstretched glove. “No. I think not. I drank to your papa. If, however, you insist on including me, I can in gratitude offer no objection.”

“Why, Lor, Ma,” interposed Lavvy the bold, “isn’t it the day that made you and Pa one and the same? I have no patience!”

“By whatever other circumstance the day may be marked, it is not the day, Lavinia, on which I will allow a child of mine to pounce upon me. I beg — nay, command! — that you will not pounce. R. W., it is appropriate to recall that it is for you to command and for me to obey. It is your house, and you are master at your own table. Both our healths!” Drinking the toast with tremendous stiffness.

“I really am a little afraid, my dear,” hinted the cherub meekly, “that you are not enjoying yourself?”

“On the contrary,” returned Mrs. Wilfer, “quite so. Why should I not?”

“I thought, my dear, that perhaps your face might—”

“My face might be a martyrdom, but what would that import, or who should know it, if I smiled?”

And she did smile; manifestly freezing the blood of Mr. George Sampson by so doing. For that young gentleman, catching her smiling eye, was so very much appalled by its expression as to cast about in his thoughts concerning what he had done to bring it down upon himself.

“The mind naturally falls,” said Mrs. Wilfer, “shall I say into a reverie, or shall I say into a retrospect? on a day like this.”

Lavvy, sitting with defiantly folded arms, replied (but not audibly), “For goodness’ sake say whichever of the two you like best, Ma, and get it over.”

“The mind,” pursued Mrs. Wilfer in an oratorical manner, “naturally reverts to Papa and Mamma — I here allude to my parents — at a period before the earliest dawn of this day. I was considered tall; perhaps I was. Papa and Mamma were unquestionably tall. I have rarely seen a finer women than my mother; never than my father.”

The irrepressible Lavvy remarked aloud, “Whatever grandpapa was, he wasn’t a female.”

“Your grandpapa,” retorted Mrs. Wilfer, with an awful look, and in an awful tone, “was what I describe him to have been, and would have struck any of his grandchildren to the earth who presumed to question it. It was one of mamma’s cherished hopes that I should become united to a tall member of society. It may have been a weakness, but if so, it was equally the weakness, I believe, of King Frederick of Prussia.” These remarks being offered to Mr. George Sampson, who had not the courage to come out for single combat, but lurked with his chest under the table and his eyes cast down, Mrs. Wilfer proceeded, in a voice of increasing sternness and impressiveness, until she should force that skulker to give himself up. “Mamma would appear to have had an indefinable foreboding of what afterwards happened, for she would frequently urge upon me, ‘Not a little man. Promise me, my child, not a little man. Never, never, never, marry a little man!’ Papa also would remark to me (he possessed extraordinary humour),‘that a family of whales must not ally themselves with sprats.’ His company was eagerly sought, as may be supposed, by the wits of the day, and our house was their continual resort. I have known as many as three copper-plate engravers exchanging the most exquisite sallies and retorts there, at one time.” (Here Mr. Sampson delivered himself captive, and said, with an uneasy movement on his chair, that three was a large number, and it must have been highly entertaining.) “Among the most prominent members of that distinguished circle, was a gentleman measuring six feet four in height. He was not an engraver.” (Here Mr. Sampson said, with no reason whatever, Of course not.) “This gentleman was so obliging as