But somehow it was all a muddle, and Joseph could make neither head nor tail of it. He felt as if he must seize and ring the dinner-bell, or carry in the form for prayers. For instance, there was that Lord Henry Moorpark there, and Captain Glen and Mr Richard Millet, who had tipped him over and over again, and ought to have married the ladies. They were there, and so was that tall, dark Major Malpas, who always "looked at him as if he had been a dorg; and lots more people crowding into the rooms, and a-eating and drinking and talking till the place was a regular bubble." Joseph either meant Babel or a state of effervescence, both similes being applicable to the condition of the private apartments on the auspicious day, as it was called by Lord Henry, who played the part of "heavy father" in the genteel comedy in course of enactment. Then Joseph--who told himself he had never seen such a set-out since he came, a hungry page from the orphan school--wanted to know why Captain Glen, who had been so huffed about Miss Clotilde's marriage, should be there, and look so jolly, and propose the health of the bride. "It seemed rum," Joseph said, "though certainly him and Miss Marie looked pretty thick now, while little Mr Millet sat next to Miss Ruth," who, to the man's notions, was "the prettiest of the lot." Joseph saw and heard a good deal. He saw Major Malpas place his glass in his dark eye, and, bringing the thick brow over it, stare very hard at the bride, who did not seem to mind it in the least--a fact which made the philosopher declare that "Miss Clo had got face enough for anything." He also heard Major Malpas, who was perfect in his dress and handsome bearing, say to one of the guests who had made some remark respecting Glen's appearance, that the Captain was a fine animal, that was all. "Too big for a soldier, sah. Looks like a big mastiff, sah, taking care of that little toy-terrier Millet." Joseph's notions of the wedding feast were very much after the fashion of the celebrated coat of his ancient namesake, of many colours, and those colours were terribly muddled up in his brain. They were bad enough before the matter of that five-pound note occurred; after that the unfortunate young man's ideas were as if shaken up in a bottle to a state of neutral tint in which nothing was plain. He put that five-pound note, crumpled as it was, either in his breeches or his behind coat-pocket, but what became of it afterwards he could not tell. He might have taken it out to hold a hot plate, to use as a d'oyley, or to wipe his nose, or to dab up the wine that Mr Elbraham spilt when he upset his champagne-glass. He might or he mightn't. He couldn't say then. All he knew was that it muddled him, and that the dinner-bell hadn't been rung, nor the form carried in for prayers.