180 TO& DRAW'S VISIT TO PINE BROOX. 



so much fire, and he pours it in pours it in, jist like as one it 

 was mother's milk to the darned critter." 



" Ple-ase Sur, t' dinner's re-ady," announced Timothy, throw- 

 ing open the folding doors, and displaying the front room, with 

 a beautiful fire blazing, and a good old fashioned round table, 

 covered with exquisite white damask-linen, and laid with four 

 covers, each flanked by a most unusual display of glasses a 

 mighty bell-mouthed rummer, namely, on a tall slender stock 

 with a white spiral line running up through the centre, an apt 

 substitute for that most awkward of all contrivances, the ordi- 

 nary champagne glass a beautiful green hock goblet, with a 

 wreath of grapes and vine leaves wrought in relief about the 

 rim a massy water tumber elaborately diamond-cut and a 

 capacious sherry -glass so delicate and thin that the slender crystal 

 actually seemed to bend under the pressure of your lip ; nor, 

 were the liquors wanting in proportion two silver wine-coolers, 

 all frosted over with the exudations from the ice within, display- 

 ed the long necks of a champagne flask and a bottle of Johan- 

 nisbergher, and four decanters hung out their labels of Port, Ma- 

 deira, brown Sherry, and Amontillado while two or three black, 

 copper-wired bottles, in the chimney-corner, announced a stock 

 of heavy-wet, for such as should incline to malt. I had expected 

 from Tom's lips some preternatural burst of wonder, at this dis- 

 play of preparation, the like of which, as I conceived, had never 

 met his eyes before but, whether he had been indoctrinated by 

 previous feeds at Harry's hospitable board, or had learned by 

 his own native wit the difficult lesson of nil admirarij he sat 

 down without any comment, though he stared a little wildly, 

 when he saw nothing eatable upon the table, except a large dish 

 of raw oysters, flanked by a lemon and a cruet of cayenne. 

 With most ineffable disdain, he waved off the plate which Tim 

 presented to him, with a " Consarn you, I arnt a goin to give 

 my belly cold with no such chillin' stuff as that. I'd like to 

 know now, Archer, if this bees all that you're a goin' to give us 

 for if so be it is, I'll go stret down to the nigger's yonder, and 

 git me a beef steak and onions ?" 



" Why, not exactly, Tom," responded Archer, when he could 

 speak for laughing " these are merely for a whet to give us an 

 appetite." 



" A blamed queer sort of wet, I think why I'd have thought 

 that ere rum, what McTavish took, would have been wet enough, 

 till what time as you got at the champagne and, as for appe- 



