When the several by-plays, as they may be termed, had taken place among the individuals of the Woodbourne family, as we have intimated in the preceding chapter, the breakfast party at length assembled, Dandie excepted, who had consulted his taste in viands, and perhaps in society, by partaking of a cup of tea with Mrs. Allan, just laced with two teaspoonfuls of Cogniac, and reinforced with various slices from a huge round of beef. He had a kind of feeling that he could eat twice as much, and speak twice as much, with this good dame and Barnes, as with the grand folk in the parlour. Indeed, the meal of this less distinguished party was much more mirthful than that in the higher circle, where there was an obvious air of constraint on the greater part of the assistants. Julia dared not raise her voice in asking Bertram if he chose another cup of tea. Bertram felt embarrassed while eating his toast-and-butter under the eye of Mannering. Lucy, while she indulged to the uttermost her affection for her recovered brother, began to think of the quarrel betwixt him and Hazlewood. The Colonel felt the painful anxiety natural to a proud mind, when it deems its slightest action subject for a moment to the watchful construction of others. The lawyer, while sedulously buttering his roll, had an aspect of unwonted gravity, arising, perhaps, from the severity of his morning studies. As for the Dominie, his state of mind was ecstatic!--He looked at Bertram--he looked at Lucy--he whimpered--he sniggled--he grinned--he committed all manner of solecisms in point of form--poured the whole cream (no unlucky mistake) upon the plate of porridge, which was his own usual breakfast--threw the slops of what he called his "crowning dish of tea" into the sugar-dish instead of the slop-basin, and concluded with spilling the scalding liquor upon old Plato, the Colonel's favourite spaniel, who received the libation with a howl that did little honour to his philosophy. The Colonel's equanimity was rather shaken by this last blunder. "Upon my word, my good friend, Mr. Sampson, you forget the difference between Plato and Zenocrates." "The former was chief of the Academics, the latter of the Stoics," said the Dominie, with some scorn of the supposition. "Yes, my dear sir, but it was Zenocrates, not Plato, who denied that pain was an evil." "I should have thought," said Pleydell, "that very respectable quadruped, which is just now limping out of the room upon three of his four legs, was rather of the Cynic school." "Very well hit off--But here comes an answer from Mac-Morlan." It was unfavourable. Mrs. Mac-Morlan sent her respectful compliments, and her husband had been, and was, detained, by some alarming disturbances which had taken place the preceding night at Portanferry, and the necessary investigation which they had occasioned. "What's to be done now, counsellor?" said the Colonel to Pleydell.