“How can I tell when I can’t hear myself think, for your noise? Dick, answer all these men, and see to the baggage being taken to the station. Jacob hasn’t knowledge enough—he would be sure to get it lost; though for that matter, I wish he would lose it—it would be an immense relief to me! I shall take Anna and Drusilla over to that restaurant, to get them out of this din, and to give them a cup of tea.” “All right, uncle. Pray go and make yourself and the ladies comfortable,” said Dick, good-humoredly. “And let me see,” said the General, examining his watch. “It is now nine o’clock. The—hem—‘parliamentary’ starts at ten. We have but an hour to wait. It will not be worth while to go to a hotel. I think it will be best for us to stop over there until it is time for us to go to the station. See to getting our tickets, Dick, will you? And have a carriage at the door there in time.” “All right, uncle. Make yourself easy.” “Come along, young women! Pina! give me that child. You look as if you were ready to drop under his weight.” “A sleeping baby is twice as heavy as a waking one, sir,” said the girl, as she placed the child in the old man’s arms. And regardless of the staring street boys who grinned at seeing the “old gent” playing nursemaid, he crossed the street to a cheerful gas-lighted pastry-cook’s shop, where he and his party were accommodated with a small private parlor and a neatly-spread tea-table. Before they got half through with tea, Dick joined them and reported that he had procured the tickets for a whole compartment in the first-class carriages, which he declared to be quite as comfortable as the civil custom-house officer had represented them to be. Dick was served with a cup of tea, a plate of sallyluns, toast, periwinkles, shrimps, and the finest strawberries he had ever seen. Dick quaffed his tea with avidity, for he was both heated and thirsty; and he also enjoyed the toast and the sallyluns; but he glanced suspiciously at the periwinkles and the shrimps. “What manner of fish, fruit or vegetable may these be?” he inquired, taking up a plate of periwinkles and squinting at them. “Taste and see,” answered Anna, as with the point of a pin she delicately drew one from its snail-like shell. Drusilla was at the same time peeling a shrimp for little Lenny. Dick glanced from one to the other and shuddered. These tea-table delicacies looked—the one so like an insect, the other so like a reptile. “Try this, Dick,” coaxed Anna, as she offered him a morsel from the point of a new pin. Dick shrank. “Now don’t be prejudiced! Consider what an uninviting edible is the oyster, in the shell or out of it! Who that did not know how good it is would ever dare to eat it? Now try this?” “Oh, thou modern Eve! I take it, since thou tellst me it is ‘good for food,’” sighed Dick, as he gingerly accepted the dainty. “Now, how do you like it?” inquired Anna.