"It's double Gloucester," said Jack Ginger; "prime, bought at the corner--Heaven pay the cheesemonger, for I shan't--but, as he is a gentleman, I give you his health." "I don't think," said Joe Macgillicuddy, "that I ought to demean myself to drink the health of a cheesemonger; but I'll not stop the bottle." And, to do Joe justice, he did not. Then we attacked the cheese, and in an incredibly short period we battered in a breach of an angle of 45 degrees, in a manner that would have done honour to any engineer that directed the guns at San Sebastian. The cheese, which on its first entry on the table presented the appearance of a plain circle, was soon made to exhibit a very different shape, as may be understood by the subjoined diagram:-- [Illustration] [A, original cheese; EBD, cheese after five minutes standing on the table; EBC, angle of 45°.] With cheese came, and with cheese went, celery. It is unnecessary to repeat what a number of puns were made on that most pun-provoking of plants. "Clear the decks," said Jack Ginger to Jerry Gallagher. "Gentlemen, I did not think of getting pastry, or puddings, or dessert, or ices, or jellies, or blancmange, or anything of the sort, for men of sense like you." We all unanimously expressed our indignation at being supposed even for a moment guilty of any such weakness; but a general suspicion seemed to arise among us that a dram might not be rejected with the same marked scorn. Jack Ginger accordingly uncorked one of Bob Burke's bottles. Whop! went the cork, and the potteen soon was seen meandering round the table. "For my part," said Antony Harrison, "I take this dram because I ate pork, and fear it might disagree with me." "I take it," said Bob Burke, "chiefly by reason of the fish." "I take it," said Joe Macgillicuddy, "because the day was warm, and it is very close in these chambers." "I take it," said Tom Meggot, "because I have been very chilly all the day." "I take it," said Humpy Harlow, "because it is such strange weather that one does not know what to do." "I take it," said Jack Ginger, "because the rest of the company takes it." "And I take it," said I, winding up the conversation, "because I like a dram." So we all took it for one reason or another--and there was an end of that. "Be off, Jerry Gallagher," said Jack--"I give to you, your heirs and assigns, all that and those which remains in the pots of half-and-half--item for your own dinners what is left of the solids--and when you have pared the bones clean, you may give them to the poor. Charity covers a multitude of sins. Brush away like a shoeblack--and levant."