We had a great time in a gastronomic sense. The meal embraced mock-turtle soup, an omelette with herbs chopped up in it, a pheasant and chipped potatoes, an apple tart and tinned apricots, anchovies on toast, pears, and a pineapple—all, of course, washed down with the juice of the grape and coffee. Champagne is a most hopeful wine, which you can have sweet or dry, and after drinking a full glass, I began to suggest plans for improving the state of the proletariat, accompanied by a suspicion that their condition was not so bad as they wanted us to think. I talked a great deal to Aunt Augusta, and smoked a whole packet of cigarettes. She also smoked and drank her coffee and listened to me intently. Presently, I began to discuss myself and my career, and thanked her very heartily for helping it forward to the best of her power, as she was doing. She was kind enough to say that I had brought a great deal of pleasure into her life, and she didn’t know what she would do without me when I started rooms on my own account. I allayed her fears in this matter and promised I would not leave her for at least another year. “From eighteen till nineteen you may count upon me,” I said, “though after another year has passed, I don’t know what may happen, because life is so full of surprises.” I then retraced the year, from the day that Doctor Dunston had sent for me to see him and I thought it was fireworks, up to the present moment in the throes of the revolution. It seemed almost impossible that so much could happen in the time; and as I smoked and indulged in a retrospect, as the saying is, I felt that the battle of life had been fought almost day and night. It had not yet been won, exactly, but there seemed fair reason to expect that with luck it soon would be. In fact, the champagne made me decidedly too pleased with all I had done, and I believe, if the truth could have been known, that I talked rather big to Aunt Augusta and was on better terms with myself than the occasion demanded. I began to sketch out my programme of life for my eighteenth year, and there is no doubt that it was too ambitious. At any rate, Aunt Augusta evidently felt that I was planning more than I could perform, and she turned my thoughts into another channel. “Of course all sorts of delightful new things will happen to you,” she said, “but it would be a pity to forget the adventures you have already had.” “I shall never forget them,” I assured her; but she told me that memory played tricks with the wisest people, and strongly advised me to spend some few spare evenings in writing a diary of the past, while it was fresh in mind. “It would be of great help to your next brother,” she told me. “He’ll be coming to London from Merivale in another eighteen months or so, and he’d love to hear all that has happened to you.”