It was some moments before I renewed the conversation, and I had scarcely done so before I was interrupted by the entrance of Benjamin Jeremiah, with a message from his aunt that dinner would be ready in a few minutes. Another long whisper to Christopher succeeded. The ci-devant fellow of Trinity looked down at his garments with a perplexed air. I saw at once that he had received a hint on the propriety of a change of raiment. To give him due leisure for this, I asked the youth to shew me a room in which I might perform the usual ablutions previous to dinner, and followed him upstairs to a comfortless sort of dressing-room, without a fire-place, where I found a yellow were jug and basin, and a towel, of so coarse a huckaback, that I did not dare adventure its rough texture next my complexion--my skin is not made for such rude fellowship. While I was tenderly and daintily anointing my hands with some hard water, of no Blandusian spring, and that vile composition entitled Windsor soap, I heard the difficult breathing of poor Clutterbuck on the stairs, and soon after he entered the adjacent room. Two minutes more, and his servant joined him, for I heard the rough voice of the domestic say, “There is no more of the wine with the black seal left, Sir!” “No more, good Dixon; you mistake grievously. I had two dozen not a week since.” “Don’t know, I’m sure, Sir!” answered Dixon, with a careless and half impertinent accent; “but there are great things, like alligators, in the cellar, which break all the bottles!” “Alligators in my cellar!” said the astonished Clutterbuck. “Yes, Sir--at least a venomous sort of reptile like them, which the people about here call efts!” “What!” said Clutterbuck, innocently, and evidently not seeing the irony of his own question; “What! have the efts broken two dozen bottles in a week? Of an exceeding surety, it is strange that a little creature of the lizard species should be so destructive--perchance they have an antipathy to the vinous smell; I will confer with my learned friend, Dr. Dissectall, touching their strength and habits. Bring up some of the port, then, good Dixon.” “Yes, Sir. All the corn is out; I had none for the gentleman’s horse.” “Why, Dixon, my memory fails me strangely, or I paid you the sum of four pounds odd shillings for corn on Friday last.” “Yes, Sir: but your cow and the chickens eat so much, and then blind Dobbin has four feeds a day, and Farmer Johnson always puts his horse in our stable, and Mrs. Clutterbuck and the ladies fed the jackass the other day in the hired donkeychaise; besides, the rats and mice are always at it.” “It is a marvel unto me,” answered Clutterbuck, “how detrimental the vermin race are; they seem to have noted my poor possessions as their especial prey; remind me that I write to Dr. Dissectall to-morrow, good Dixon.”