Arriving in his room, the door of which he has had some trouble in opening, on account of the knob having wandered in his absence to the wrong side, Mr. BUMSTEAD indicates a bottle of lemon tea, with some glasses, on the table, accidentally places the lamp so that it shines directly upon EDWIN'S triangular sketch of FLORA over the mantel, and, taking his umbrella under his arm, smiles horribly at his young guests from out his sun-bonnet. "Do you recognize that picture, PENDRAGONS?" he asks, after the two have drunk fierily at each other. "Do you notice its stereoscopic effect of being double?" "Ah," says MONTGOMERY, critically, "a good deal in the style of HENNESSY, or WINSLOW HOMER, I should say. Something in the school-slate method." "It's by EDWINS, there!" explains Mr. BUMSTEAD, triumphantly. "Just look at him as he sits there both together, with all his happiness cut out for him, and his dislike of Southerners his only fault." "If I could only draw Miss PENDRAGON, now," says EDWIN DROOD, rather flattered, "I might do better. A good sharp nose and Southern complexion help wonderfully in the expression of a picture." "Perhaps my sister would prefer to choose her own artist," remarks MONTGOMERY, to whom Mr. BUMSTEAD has just poured out some more lemon tea. "Say a Southern one, for instance, who might use some of the flying colors that were always warranted to run when our boys got after yours in the late war," responds EDWIN, to whom his attentive uncle has also poured out some more lemon tea for his cold. "For instance--at Fredericksburgh," observes MONTGOMERY. "I was thinking of Fort Donelson," returns EDWIN. The conservative BUMSTEAD strives anxiously to allay the irritation of his young guests by prodding first one and then the other with his umbrella; and, in an attempt to hold both of them and the picture behind him in one commanding glance under his sun-bonnet, presents a phase of strabismus seldom attained by human eyes. "If I only had you down where I come from, Mr. DROOD," cries MONTGOMERY, tickled into ungovernable wrath by the ferule of the umbrella, I'd tar and feather you like a Yankee teacher, and then burn you like a freedman's church." "Oh!--if you only had me _there_, you'd do so," cries EDWIN DROOD, springing to his feet as the umbrella tortures his ribs. "_If_, eh? Pooh, pooh, my young fellow, I perceive that you are a mere Cincinnati Editor." The degrading epithet goads PENDRAGON to fury, and, after throwing his remaining lemon tea about equally upon EDWIN and the sun-bonnet, he extracts the sugar from the bottom of the glass with his fingers, and uses the goblet to ward off a last approach of the umbrella. "EDWINS! MONTGOMERIES!" exclaims Mr. BUMSTEAD, opening the umbrella between them so suddenly that each is grazed on the nose by a whalebone rib, "I command you to end this Congressional debate at once. I never saw four such young men before! MONTGOMERIES, put up your penknife thizinstant!"