CHAPTER VIII.

Dinner is on table.

My father desires your worship's company.

Merry Wives of Windsor.

Give me a good dinner, and an appetite to eat it, and I will be happier than the mightiest potentate which this world can produce, surrounded by his satellites, and rioting in the indulgence of immeasurable power. Satisfied in this respect, I should pass my time in unalloyed happiness, and pity those whom fate had excluded from a similar enjoyment, as the victims of chance, and the slaves of misery.

DR. JOHNSON.

On the day, and precisely at the hour indicated, I was at the door of the Lord Provost. His house was situated in a small square, of a sombre and dreary aspect, the centre of which, instead of being as usual laid out in walks and shrubbery, was, with true mercantile sagacity, appropriated to the more profitable purpose, of grazing a few smoky and dirty-looking sheep. It was certainly not pleasant to approach the house of feasting amid the plaintive bleatings of these miserable starvelings; but there was no time to be sentimental, and, like the Lady Baussiere, I passed on. On being admitted into the hall, I was received by two servants in the Royal livery, a circumstance of magnificence for which I was certainly not prepared. The truth was, however, as I have since discovered, that a male domestic formed no part of the ordinary establishment of the Lord Provost, and these were a couple of the City Guard, or,

as they were more generally called, "Town's Officers," admitted pro loco et tempore, to assume the functions of livery servants. I was in the act of di

vesting myself of my hat and great coat, when I heard the following question put in a bawling voice from the landing place of the stair above.

"Hector, what ca' ye him?"

"I ettle he's a young Englishman frae the College," answered Hector.

"I carena' whare he's frae," returned the other, "but I want his name. Didna I tell baith you and Duncan, to cry oot a' the names to me, that they may be properly annoonced?"

Hector lost no time in rectifying his mistake, and I speedily heard my name reverberated in a voice like thunder, through every corner of the mansion. The person from whose lungs this immense volume of sound proceeded, was a large stout man with a head like a bull's, and a huge and carbuncled nose. His dress bespoke him to belong to the same corps with his brethren below, and he was in fact no other than the person who officiated as town-crier, commonly known by the familiar soubriquet of Bell Geordy. His duty of announcing the guests being somewhat analogous to his usual avocation, he appeared to discharge it con amore, and proclaimed every successive arrival in the same monotonous and stentorian tones, in which he was accustomed to give public intimation of the arrival of a cargo of fresh herrings at the Broomielaw. Bell Geordy, too, was a wit, and did not scruple occasionally to subjoin in an under tone, some jocular remark on the character or person of the guests as he announced them.

The drawing-room into which I was ushered, was evidently an apartment not usually inhabited by the family, but kept for occasions of display. The fur

niture it contained was scanty, but gaudy; the chairs were arranged in formal order against the walls; and there were flower-stands in the windows, displaying some half-dozen scraggy myrtles, and geraniums, with leaves approaching to the colour of mahogany. The room was cold; for the fire, which had evidently been only recently lighted, sent up volumes of smoke, but no flame; and when I looked on it, I remembered to have passed a dirty maidservant on the stair, with the kitchen bellows in her hand. On my entrance, I found I 'was the first of the party; and before the attention of the reader is distracted by the arrival of fresh guests, it may be as well to seize the present opportunity of introducing him to the Lord Provost and his family.

His lordship was a little squab man, with a highlypowdered head and a pigtail, and an air somewhat strutty and consequential. His visage was a little disfigured by the protrusion of an enormous buck-tooth, which, whenever his countenance was wreathed into a smile, overshadowed a considerable portion of his under lip. One of his legs, too, was somewhat shorter than the other, which, when he walked, occasioned rather a ludicrous jerking of the body, and did by no means contribute to that air of graceful dignity which he was evidently desirous of infusing into all his motions. He was dressed in a complete suit of black velvet, and bore conspicuously on his breast the insignia of his civic supremacy. His lady was a stiff and raw-boned-looking matron, hard in feature, and somewhat marked by the small-pox. She wore a yellow silk-gown, adorned in front with a Scotch pebble brooch, about the size of a cheese plate, and on her head a green turban, from which depended on one side a plume of black ostrich feath

ers.

The two daughters, Miss Jacky and Miss Lexy,

displayed their young and budding charms by the side of the parent-flower. Neither had the smallest pretensions to good looks; but of their character, nothing immediately betrayed itself to the spectator, beyond a certain air of self complacency, with which they occasionally regarded their pink dresses. There, too, was Mr. Archibald Shortridge, junior, with his carroty head, and his great red ears, his mouth perked up as if about to whistle, and his mutton-fists in his breeches pockets, straddling before the fire, with the tails of his coat below his arms, to prevent all possible obstruction to the radiation of the heat. I was welcomed by his lordship with an air of dignified hospitality, saluted with a nod by his son, introduced to, and benignantly received, by the Lady Provost and the young ladies.

The sound of the door-bell now became more frequent, and Bell Geordy's powers were called into full and active employment. I shall venture, even at the risk of being considered a romancer, (a character which more than any other I despise,) to give a specimen or two of the facetious manner in which this functionary discharged the duties of his office. As thus-Door-bell rings-drawing-room door opens -Bell Geordy, in a loud, slow, and sonorous voice, "Doctor Struthers." In a low and suppressed key, 66 Hech, but he's a puir stick in the poopit." Again : -Preparation as before. Bell Geordy-" Miss Mysie Yule." In a lower tone, "She's right aneuch to come here, for I'm thinking there's no muckle gaun' at hame." Forté-Major Aundrew MacGuffin." Piano-"Wi' the happety-leg.--Maister Saumul Walkinshaw.-l'se warrant he'll carry awa' a wame

fu"."

In vain did the Lord Provost, whose ear these unseemly comments occasionally reached, express his

disapprobation of the indecorum, and authoritatively direct him to confine his speech to the mère annunciation of names. Bell Geordy's wit was not thus to be trammelled, especially when he observed it generally followed by a grin and titter through the assembly. Every body, indeed, appeared to enjoy those jokes which were cut at their neighbours' expense, without reflecting that their own appearance had probably given rise to similar witticisms.

At length the company were all assembled, and dinner, after a dreary interval of expectation, an nounced. The ladies, in solemn dignity, led the way, singly and unescorted by the gentlemen. I observed some little scuffling among the dowagers about precedence, and occasionally a poke of the elbow given and returned with interest, and my ear sometimes caught a contemptuous snorting, like that of a frightened horse, which proceeded from some of those ladies, who, defrauded by their more active competitors of what they considered their proper place in the cortège, were compelled unwillingly to figure in the rear. The indignation of Mrs. M'Corkadale, indeed, (the widow, I presume, of the poor doctor whose fate has been commemorated by Girzy,) was too vehement to be confined to mere pantomimic expression; and as she passed, I overheard the following soliloquy:" Set her up, indeed, to walk before me! Does she think folk hae forgotten that her grandfather was a tailor on the tae side, and a flunky on the tither-that her father was naething but a broken baxter-and that she hersel was brought up in the Aums-house ?-My certy, but she's no blate !"

The sight of the dinner-table, however, and the savour of the steaming viands, had a soothing effect in calming for the nonce, all effervescences of tem