Alas! before dinner was well over, Mr. Binney was in a state the mere imagination of which would have made him blush with shame in his more collected moments. His face was flushed, his speech thick, and his laughter meaningless but incessant. His guests were, most of them, in a similar state, and the unhappy little man, instead of mildly rebuking them for their excesses, as he had been accustomed to do, encouraged them to further libations, and filled their glasses himself with an unsteady hand, and giggling exhortations to make a night of it. At a later stage of the evening Mr. Binney was on his legs making the inevitable speech. It was an entirely incoherent speech, but his hearers applauded it no less for that. When a gleam of intelligence did detach itself from Mr. Binney's rambling procession of verbiage and pierce their heated brains, the cheers and hammerings on the table rose to fever pitch, and spurred on the poor little object to still greater exertions. During one of these interludes, when the applause was at its height and Mr. Binney stood leaning against the table with glassy eye and fatuous smile waiting for the din to subside, and bracing himself up for a further attempt, the door of the room opened, and a tall black figure, its face wearing an expression of scandalised amazement, stood framed in the door-way. It was the Reverend Dr. Toller come to expostulate with the wandering sheep of his otherwise irreproachable flock. Mr. Binney was the first to notice him. He frowned slightly in a determined effort to regain his scattered senses. Then the amiable smile spread once more over his face as he recognised his friend. "Dorrertoller!" he cried, in a delighted impulse of hospitable welcome. "Come in, my dear sir, and dring a glass o' wine. You see me, Dorrertoller, s'rounded by m' friends, celebrelating merrificent vickery, boclub. Genelmel, 'low me, ole friend, Dorrertoller. Come in, ole boy. Mayself tome. Siddown." "Mr. Binney!" said the good doctor in an awful tone. "Are you aware, sir, of the terrible scandal you are bringing upon yourself and your friends by this unseemly--this disgraceful conduct?" "Thashalri, Dorrertoll," said the unhappy Mr. Binney. "Siddow. All ole frells here."