"You are awaiting your nephew, EDWIN DROOD?" "Yeshir." As he answers, Mr. BUMSTEAD leans languidly far across the table, and seems vaguely amazed at the aspect of the lamp with his hat upon it. Mr. SIMPSON retires softly, stops to greet some one at the foot of the stairs, and, in another moment, a young man fourteen years old enters the room with his carpet-bag. "My dear boys! My dear EDWINS!" Thus speaking, Mr. BUMSTEAD sidles eagerly at the new comer, with open arms, and, in falling upon his neck, does so too heavily, and bears him with a crash to the ground. "Oh, see here! this is played out, you know," ejaculates the nephew, almost suffocated with travelling-shawl and BUMSTEAD. Mr. BUMSTEAD rises from him slowly and with dignity. "Excuse me, dear EDWIN, I thought there were two of you." EDWIN DROOD regains his feet with alacrity and casts aside his shawl. "Whatever you thought, uncle, I am still a single man, although your way of coming down on a chap was enough to make me beside myself. Any grub, JACK?" With a check upon his enthusiasm and a sudden gloom of expression amounting almost to a squint, Mr. BUMSTEAD motions with his whole right side toward an adjacent room in which a table is spread, and leads the way thither in a half-circle. "Ah, this is prime!" cries the young fellow, rubbing his hands; the while he realizes that Mr. BUMSTEAD'S squint is an attempt to include both himself and the picture over the mantel in the next room in one incredibly complicated look. Not much is said during dinner, as the strength of the boarding-house butter requires all the nephew's energies for single combat with it, and the uncle is so absorbed in a dreamy effort to make a salad with his hash and all the contents of the castor, that he can attend to nothing else. At length the cloth is drawn, EDWIN produces some peanuts from his pocket and passes some to Mr. BUMSTEAD, and the latter, with a wet towel pinned about his head, drinks a great deal of water. "This is Sissy's birthday, you know, JACK," says the nephew, with a squint through the door and around the corner of the adjoining apartment toward the crude picture over the mantel, "and, if our respective respected parents hadn't bound us by will to marry, I'd be mad after her." Crack. On EDWIN DROOD'S part. Hic. On Mr. BUMSTEAD'S part. "Nobody's dictated a marriage for you, JACK. _You_ can choose for yourself. Life for _you_ is still fraught with freedom's intoxicating--" Mr. BUMSTEAD has suddenly become very pale, and perspires heavily on the forehead. "Good Heavens, JACK! I haven't hurt your feelings?" Mr. BUMSTEAD makes a feeble pass at him with the water-decanter, and smiles in a very ghastly manner. "Lem me be a mis'able warning to you, EDWIN," says Mr. BUMSTEAD, shedding tears.