army lately under his command to “Should--der ar-r-ums,” that he was open to “be blessed,” on the spot, if “the jolly old place did not look stunning,” she was by no means inclined to afford him the benediction he had invoked, and heartily wished him at the bottom of the Red Sea, which we take to be the lowest geographical limit to which a lady’s anathema can be permitted to descend. She had not time to do more than condemn her unknown visitor to the oceanic penal settlement aforesaid, ere a sound as of a jibbing man impelled forward by some powerful agency in the rear, together with the following expostulation, met her ear:--“My dear fellow, I’m not fit to be introduced; I’m all over mud, I am upon my life!” In another moment the drawing-room door flew open, and her husband and a tall, large, bushy-whiskered, bluff, young man, who looked as if he could only have been brought in doors by way of a trick, like a pony, or a wheelbarrow, stood before her. “Alice, this is Tom Rattleworth, an old schoolfellow of mine, who is very anxious to form your acquaintance, and has kindly consented to dine with us,” observed Harry. “Hey!--haw!” began Tom Rattleworth, uttering sounds like a bashful ogre in his intense consciousness of his muddy disqualification for female society; “haw!--hey! the kindnesses all--haw!--the other way. I hope--Mrs. Coverdale--my dear fellow--will excuse--I told you I wasn’t fit to be seen; but you seem to be--the roads are--impetuous as ever--so very muddy.” Having delivered himself of this slightly incoherent address, the embryo M.F.H. “made his reverence” to Alice, and then performing the military evolution expressed in the mysterious terms, “To the right about! wheel!” he laid violent hands upon his host, and forced him out of the room as energetically as he had been himself propelled into it. The dinner soon made its appearance, and was a “real blessing” to all parties, for it provided them something wherewith to occupy their mouths, and thus obviated the painful necessity of manufacturing small-talk--a toil compared with which the labours of Hercules appear child’s play, and the up-hill work of Sisyphus a mere game at ball. The first sharp edge of his appetite taken off, Tom Rattleworth began to converse fluently upon the only topic which never failed him, and which invariably formed the staple ingredient in his discourse, and, indeed, in his thoughts generally--viz., himself and his own sayings and doings. Alice, bored and unhappy, uttered monosyllabic replies, when she perceived that she was expected to do so; and remained silent and _distraite_ when such exertions were not required of her.