"No," he said, "you are quite right." And such was the tension that Grandmamma's remarks had caused that the whole room was silent for him. "We are losing our hold on all that is most precious. Take London at this moment--look at the scores and scores of attractions to induce people to leave home in the evenings and break up the family circle--restaurants, concert rooms, entertainments, theatres. Look at the music halls. Do you know how many music halls there are in London and Greater London at this moment?" "No," said Grandmamma sternly, "I have no notion. I have never entered one." Lionel shot a glance at me which distinctly said, in his own deplorable idiom, "What price Alf Pinto?" Mr. Dabney, I regret to say, intercepted the tail of it, and suddenly realised that he was straying from the wiser path of the passive listener. So he remarked, "Of course not," and brought the conversation back to Boz. "Mr. Dickens," said Grandmamma, "did me the honour to converse with me in Manchester in the sixties. I was there with me dear husband on business, and we stayed in the same hotel as Mr. Dickens, and breakfasted at the same table. The toast was not good, and Mr. Dickens, I remember, compared it in his inimitable way to sawdust. It was a perfect simile. He was very droll. What particularly struck me about him was his eye--so bright and restless--and his quick ways. He seemed all nerves. In the course of our conversation I told him I had met Mr. Thackeray, but he was not interested. I remember another thing he said. In paying his bill he gave the waiter a very generous tip, which was the slang word with which me dear husband always used to describe a _douceur_. 'There,' Mr. Dickens said, as he gave it to the waiter, 'that's ----' How very stupid! I have forgotten what he said, but it was full of wit. 'There,' he said---- Dear me!" "Never mind, Grandmamma," said Naomi, "you will think of it presently." "But it was so droll and clever," said the old lady. "Surely, Alderley, dear, I have told you of it?" "Oh yes, mother, many times," said Alderley; "but I can't for the life of me think of it at the moment. Strange, isn't it," he remarked to us all at large, "how often the loss of memory in one person seems to infect others--one forgets and all forget. We had a case in Chambers the other day." Their father's stories having no particular sting in them, his children abandoned him to their mother, who listens devotedly, and we again fell into couples. But it was useless to attempt disregard of old Mrs. Wynne. There was a feeling in the air that trouble lay ahead, and we all reserved one ear for her. "And Mr. Thackeray?"--Mr. Dabney asked, with an appearance of the deepest interest.