My uncle was very jolly at dinner. He roared over my mistake about the ruins, and brought the tears to my eyes by his description of the two members of the antiquarian society. It was plain that both he and his daughter were striving might and main to make amends for the sufferings I had undergone on the previous day. Teazer, perhaps, was a little bashful, a little demure under her father’s eye; but _he_ was not to be resisted. I daresay a good many of his stories enriched the pages of Joe Miller; I daresay he had told them over and over again any time these twenty years. But what was that to me? What anecdotes he had, he related well. He was so anxious, moreover, that I should be amused, that I more than once echoed his own kindly roar, when the best of his joke lay in his broad, honest, hearty, British expanse of face. As to O’Twist, the man pained me with his officiousness. He was for ever at my ear, whispering with silvery softness, “A little more sherry, sir?” “I can ricommind this claret, sir;” “Will you throy the champeene, sir?” “Perhaps your honour would preefar the Meedeery?” I think he wanted to make me tipsy to show his remorse. He avoided looking at me from motives of memory and delicacy I could sincerely appreciate; but I could not move without bringing him to my side. After dinner we went into the grounds, where coffee was brought us. This is a pretty fine life for a banker’s clerk! thought I, stretching back in an arm-chair and smoking one of my uncle’s _Imperiales_, a cigar, Matilda, worth half-a-crown, as thick as your dainty wrist, and nearly ten inches long. Ten inches of bliss! _O crudele fuoco!_ that so much leaf paradisaical should ever turn to innutritious ash! Yesterday I should have expected Teazer to pull out a black cutty pipe, load it with cavendish tobacco, and call for a glass of rum. Now she sat in a low chair, her hands folded on her lap, quiet, attentive, gentle in aspect and manner, despite the bright flash that filled her eyes each time she raised them. I thought of yesterday’s comedy, the queer resolution that had prompted her, the histrionic ability that had fooled me. Were I to write such a story, I thought, who would believe me? It was one of those possible things that are incredible. Ghosts, murders, and bigamies, living burials, exhumations, and pushing-your-sweetheart’s-husband-over-precipices, are events which happen every moment, which you may number among the sights you witness every time you take your walks abroad, and are therefore fit subjects for novel-writers to deal with. But that any young lady, calling herself a lady, could act----