Mr. Boyce-Upchurch sniffed at the fragrance arising from the dish which had been put before him. He sniffed rather with the air of a reluctant patient going under the ether, and with his spoon he stirred up from the bottom fragments of the rubbery black meat and bits of the queer-shaped little bones and then he inquired what this might be. He emphasized the '_this_.' "It's terrapin," explained Mrs. Gridley, who had been fluttering through a small pause for him to taste the mixture and give his verdict. "One of the special dishes of my own state." "And what's terrapin?" he pressed. She told him. "Oh," he said, "sort of turtle, eh? I shan't touch it. Take it away, please,"--this to the reverential Ditto hovering in the immediate background. From this point on, the talk ceased to be general. In spots, the dinner comparatively was silent, then again in other spots conversation abounded. From his seat near the foot, Mr. Braid kept casting interpolations in the direction of the farther end of the table. Repeatedly his sister squelched him. At least, she tried to do so. He seemed to thrive on polite rebuffs, though. He sat between the Thwaites, and Major Thwaites was almost inarticulate, as was usual with him, and Mrs. Thwaites said very little, which was not quite so usual a thing with her, and Mr. Braid apparently felt that he must sow his ill-timed whimsicalities broad-cast rather than bestow them upon the dead eddy of his immediate neighborhood. For instance, when Miss Rachel Semmes, who was one of Ingleglade's most literary women, bent forward from her favored position almost directly opposite the guest of honor and said, facing eagerly toward him over the table, "Oh, Mr. Boyce-Upchurch, talk to me of English letters," Mr. Braid broke right in: "Let's all talk about English letters," he suggested. "My favorite one is 'Z.' Well, I like 'H,' too, fairly well. But to me, after all, 'Z' is the most intriguing. What's your favorite, everybody?" Here, as later, his attempted levity met deservedly the interposed barrier of Miss Semmes' ignoring shoulders. She twisted in her place, turning her back on him, the more forcibly to administer the reproof and with her eyes agleam behind her glasses and her lips making little attentive sucked-in gasping sounds, she harkened while Mr. Boyce-Upchurch discoursed to her of English letters with frequent references to his own contributions in that great field.