“My dear Rattleworth, I’m sorry to interrupt you,” exclaimed Coverdale, who could bear it no longer, “but I’m afraid my wife is a little overcome by the heat of the room--those servants will make such ridiculously large fires. My dear Alice, if you prefer the drawing-room, I’m sure Rattleworth will excuse you; this place is like the black-hole in Calcutta.” And while Rattleworth, talking all the time, sprang to open the door, Harry covered his wife’s retreat by instituting a furious onslaught upon the unoffending fire. It was well he came to the rescue when he did, for in another minute Alice would have been in hysterics. To get rid of his dear friend as soon as possible was Harry’s next anxiety, but this was no such easy matter. Thomas Rattleworth, Esq., M.F.H., was at that happy moment the victim of two strenuous necessities--one to listen to the sound of his own voice, expressing not so much his ideas as his paucity thereof; and the other to imbibe a bottle of port wine, in twelve doses of a wine-glass each; and these necessities had the unfortunate property of re-acting upon and increasing each other; for talking made him thirsty, and drinking made him talkative, so that it was eleven o’clock before he had talked himself out, by which time the terminus of a second bottle of port had been arrived at. With a feeling of relief such as Sinbad the Sailor might have experienced when he felt the legs of the Old Man of the Sea gradually relaxing their clasp around his wearied shoulders, did Harry assist his friend to light a cigar, then watched its fiery tip gradually disappear in the darkness, as Rattleworth’s cover hack cantered off with its master’s six feet one of good-natured goose-flesh.