He is a smiling piece of vacancy, and he smiled in the mean way in which he will even smile at the public if he gets a chance (language can say no meaner of him), and he stood upright near the door with the back of his head agin the wall, as if he was a waiting for somebody to come and measure his heighth for the Army. “I should not enter, ladies,” says Our Missis, “on the revolting disclosures I am about to make, if it was not in the hope that they will cause you to be yet more implacable in the exercise of the power you wield in a constitutional country, and yet more devoted to the constitutional motto which I see before me;” it was behind her, but the words sounded better so; “‘May Albion never learn!’” Here the pupils as had made the motto, admired it, and cried, “Hear! Hear! Hear!” Sniff, showing an inclination to join in chorus, got himself frowned down by every brow. “The baseness of the French,” pursued Our Missis, “as displayed in the fawning nature of their Refreshmenting, equals, if not surpasses, anythink as was ever heard of the baseness of the celebrated Buonaparte.” Miss Whiff, Miss Piff and me, we drored a heavy breath, equal to saying, “We thought as much!” Miss Whiff and Miss Piff seeming to object to my droring mine along with theirs, I drored another, to aggravate ’em. “Shall I be believed,” says Our Missis, with flashing eyes, “when I tell you that no sooner had I set my foot upon that treacherous shore—” Here Sniff, either busting out mad, or thinking aloud, says, in a low voice: “Feet. Plural, you know.” The cowering that come upon him when he was spurned by all eyes, added to his being beneath contempt, was sufficient punishment for a cove so grovelling. In the midst of a silence rendered more impressive by the turned-up female noses with which it was pervaded, Our Missis went on: “Shall I be believed when I tell you that no sooner had I landed,” this word with a killing look at Sniff, “on that treacherous shore, than I was ushered into a Refreshment Room where there were, I do not exaggerate, actually eatable things to eat?” A groan burst from the ladies. I not only did myself the honour of jining, but also of lengthening it out. “Where there were,” Our Missis added, “not only eatable things to eat, but also drinkable things to drink?” A murmur, swelling almost into a scream, ariz. Miss Piff, trembling with indignation, called out: “Name!”