Bella helped him with his supplemental cookery, and made him very happy, but put him in mortal terror too by asking him when they sat down at table again, how he supposed they cooked fowls at the Greenwich dinner, and whether he believed they really were such pleasant dinners as people said? His secret winks and nods of remonstrance, in reply, made the mischievous Bella laugh until she choked, and then Lavinia was obliged to slap her on the back, and then she laughed the more. But her mother was a fine corrective at the other end of the table; to whom her father, in the innocence of his good fellowship, at intervals appealed with: "My dear, I am afraid you are not enjoying yourself?" "Why so, R. W.?" she would sonorously reply. "Because, my dear, you seem a little out of sorts." "Not at all," would be the rejoinder, in exactly the same tone. "Would you take a merry-thought, my dear?" "Thank you. I will take whatever you please, R. W." "Well, but my dear, do you like it?" "I like it as well as I like anything, R. W." The stately woman would then, with a meritorious appearance of devoting herself to the general good, pursue her dinner as if she were feeding somebody else on high public grounds. Bella had brought dessert and two bottles of wine, thus shedding unprecedented splendor on the occasion. Mrs. Wilfer did the honors of the first glass by proclaiming: "R. W., I drink to you." "Thank you, my dear. And I to you." "Pa and Ma!" said Bella. "Permit me," Mrs. Wilfer interposed, with outstretched glove. "No. I think not. I drank to your Pa. If, however, you insist on including me, I can in gratitude offer no objection." "Why, Lor, Ma," interposed Lavvy the bold, "isn't it the day that made you and Pa one and the same? I have no patience." "By whatever other circumstances the day may be marked, it is not the day, Lavinia, on which I will allow a child of mine to pounce upon me. I beg--nay, command!--that you will not pounce. R. W., it is appropriate to recall that it is for you to command and for me to obey." "It is your house, and you are master at your own table. Both our healths!" Drinking the toast with tremendous stiffness. "I really am a little afraid, my dear," hinted the cherub meekly, "that you are not enjoying yourself?" "On the contrary," returned Mrs. Wilfer, "quite so. Why should I not?" "I thought, my dear, that perhaps your face might--" "My face might be a martyrdom, but what would that import, or who should know it if I smiled?" And she did smile; manifestly freezing the blood of Mr. George Sampson by so doing. For that young gentleman, catching her smiling eye, was so very much appalled by its expression as to cast in his thoughts concerning what he had done to bring it down upon himself. "The mind naturally falls," said Mrs. Wilfer, "shall I say into a reverie, or shall I say into a retrospect? on a day like this."