IN less than an hour after the incident above recorded, Major Oldschool was seated in the parlour, at the head of the table, entertaining “Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys, their son and daughter,” to a “quiet cup of tea;” while Mrs. Coddle kept continually fidgeting in and out of the room—bobbing in now with a plate of muffins—and now with a pot of marmalade; and each time she did so, whispering in the Major’s ear, as she placed “the delicacy” on the table, some fresh instructions as to the mode of conducting the ceremonies on such important occasions. At one time she would nudge his elbow, as she leant over the table, and say, aside, to him, “There you are again draining the teapot down to the very dregs!” and at another, she would exclaim, in an under-tone, “What ever are you about, filling up the cups without emptying the slops!”—until the poor Major grew so confused as to the formalities of the tea-table, that he emptied the entire contents of the cream jug into the slop-basin; and in his anxiety to hand the tea-cake to Mrs. Sandboys, and prevail upon her to take “just one small piece more,” left the tap of the urn running, and was not aware of his neglect until Cursty suddenly jumped up from his chair, startled by a stream of boiling-hot pouring on to his knees. The Sandboys, however, were all too well pleased with their recent good fortune to do other than laugh at the little mishaps of the tea-table; and Mr. Sandboys himself had been so often in hot water of late, that after the first smart of that from the urn, he could afford to chuckle over the accident almost as heartily as his son Jobby, who no sooner saw his father start up, and wildly drag the front of his trousers from his knee, than guessing what had happened, the lad was seized with a comic convulsion while in the act of drinking his fourth cup, and spurted the entire contents of it over the clean cap of Mrs. Coddle as she rushed frantically to the urn to stay the scalding torrent that was pouring from the tap.