WHEN the Reverend’s butler came in the first time with a fresh supply of claret, he found the assembled guests making themselves happy each in his own way. His master and Struggles were crossing the Skeffington Lordship with great enthusiasm, in an imaginary run with Mr. Tailby’s hounds. Brush was expatiating on the merits of the vintage to the Honourable Crasher, who, saying but little in reply, was smiling faintly, and denoting his approval by the regularity with which he charged and emptied his glass. Savage, who dabbled in science, was explaining to Sawyer with considerable perspicuity, a new discovery termed phonography, by which sounds or vibrations of air are to be taken down as they arise, upon the principle of the photograph, and which, when thoroughly perfected and carried out, will make it no longer an impertinence to request a bystander “not to look at you in that tone of voice,” and flattered himself that so good a listener must be imbibing stores of valuable information from his remarks; Mr. Sawyer, however, was lost in delicious dreams, tinged, as the decanter waned, with rosier and rosier hues. He was, for the moment, unconscious of Savage, of Brush, of Crasher, and only recognised the Reverend as the purveyor of the best claret he had ever drunk, and the father of such an angel as all England could not match. The second time the white-waistcoated functionary arrived with “another of the same,” things wore a far different aspect. Everybody was talking at once on the same subject. Like a bag-fox before an unruly pack of hounds, the topic of steeple-chasing had been started for the general confusion, and each ran his own line and threw his tongue for his own especial encouragement; there seemed no doubt about the long-talked-of race coming off. Preliminaries were adjusted, weights discussed, and a country suggested. Even Struggles seemed to have got over his aversion to the mongrel sport. But on the stout Ganymede’s third and last appearance with “the landlord’s bottle,” the storm was at its loudest, Mr. Sawyer laying down the law with the best. Betting-books were out: even the Reverend had produced what he called “some memorandums;” and the only intelligible sounds, amidst the clamour, were the ominous words “five-to-two”—current odds which everybody seemed to lay, and nobody to take. The discreet servant then whispered to his master that a second edition of coffee was ready to go into the drawing-room, and ere long a glass of brown sherry all round screwed our friends’ courage up to face the ladies once more. Each man accordingly composed his features into a vacant simper, pulled his neckcloth up, and his wristbands down, and straddled into the presence of those indulgent beings, with an abortive attempt to look as if he, individually, had been drinking little or no wine.