The young end of the table heaved and quivered with primeval mirth. Even Flossie Walker was moved to a faint smile. For Mr. Soper, though outwardly taciturn and morose, was possessed inwardly by a perfect fury of sociability, an immortal and insatiable craving to converse. It was an instinct which, if gratified, would have undermined the whole fabric of the Dinner, being essentially egoistic, destructive and malign. Mr. Soper resented the rapidity with which Rickman had been accepted by the boarding-house; he himself, after two years' residence, only maintaining a precarious popularity by little offerings of bon-bons to the ladies. Hence the bitterness of his present mood. "There are thoughts _and_ thoughts," said Mrs. Downey severely, for the commercial gentleman had touched her in a very sensitive place. "And when Mr. Rickman is in wot I call 'is vein, there's nobody like him for making a dinner go off." Here Mr. Soper achieved a sardonic, a really sardonic smile. "Oh, of course, if you're eludin' to the young gentleman's appetite--" But this was insufferable, it was wounding Mrs. Downey in the tenderest spot of all. The rose of her face became a peony. "I'm doing no such thing. If any gentleman wishes to pay me a compliment--" her gay smile took for granted that no gentleman could be so barbarous as not to feel that wish--"let him show an appetite. As for the ladies, I wish they had an appetite to show. Mr. Partridge, let me give you a little more canary pudding. It's as light as light. No? Oh--come, Mr. Partridge." Mr. Partridge's gesture of refusal was so vast, so expressive, that it amounted to a solemn personal revelation which implied, not so much that Mr. Partridge rejected canary pudding as that he renounced pleasure, of which canary pudding was but the symbol and the sign. "Mr. Spinks then? He'll let me give him another slice, _I_ know." "You bet. Tell you wot it is, Mrs. Downey, the canary that pudding was made of, must have been an uncommonly fine bird." There was a swift step on the pavement, the determined click of a latch-key, and the clang of a closing door. "Why, here _is_ Mr. Rickman," said Mrs. Downey, betraying the preoccupation of her soul. Rickman's entrance produced a certain vibration down both sides of the table, a movement unanimous, yet discordant, as if the nerves of this social body that was "Mrs. Downey's" were being played upon every way at once. Each boarder seemed to be preparing for an experience that, whether agreeable or otherwise, would be disturbing to the last degree. The birds of passage raised their heads with a faint flutter. Miss Walker contemplated a chromo-lithograph with a dreamy air. Mr. Soper strove vainly to fix himself in an attitude of dignified detachment. The boarding-house was about to suffer the tremendous invasion of a foreign element. For a moment it was united.