her green-room cognomen of “Mother Moses” appeared by no means inappropriate. Of the young ladies we will only say that, like _all_ young ladies, they were irresistible. Just at first starting, matters appeared a little dull and unpromising; the fact being that the two elder Tickletonians, not finding, when put to the test, that they were quite such thorough men of the world as they imagined themselves, suffered under an uncomfortable inability to make small talk; while Jack Sprattly, possessing a most inconvenient appetite, was so engrossed with the good cheer before him, that conversation, under the circumstances, became a physical impossibility. As the supper progressed, however, and more especially when the champagne (which really was not bad for Tickle-town) had made two or three rounds, affairs began to brighten. Mrs. Fitz-Siddons, unlike the voracious Macheath (which hungry highwayman still continued to demolish a supper more fitted for forty thieves than for one), was able to eat, drink, and talk at the same moment; and soon, by the cheerful, not to say jolly, style alike of the sentiments she expressed and of the manner in which she expressed them, succeeded in placing the “young people,” as she called them, upon a more friendly footing. “Cora-lee, my love,” she began (and be it observed, parenthetically, that this, noble woman spoke with a slight Irish brogue--a philological fact to be accounted for only by the hypothesis, which she herself had started on a particular occasion, when she was suffering from a temporary nervous affection which confused her speech and imparted a slight unsteadiness to her gait, viz., that her mother must have been an Irishman), “Cora-lee, my love! don’t ye see Mr. Biggington waiting to take wine with ye; thank ye, sir, since you’re so very pressing I’ll not refuse; only up to my thumb, if you please, sir” (as she spoke, she, with delightful unconsciousness, ran her thumb up the glass as the wine advanced, until her digit and the champagne reached the brim simultaneously). “Your health, Mr. Norman, sir; O-phaliur, my darling, the same to the fortunes of the colville family. Go you;--it’s the cavalry you’re going into, Mr. Norman, they do tell me, and it’s an ornament you’ll be to the ridgimint--fine men they are, the Lancers. I’d a brother in them once; maybe you’ll have heard tell of Major Fitz-Siddons? Six feet six did he stand in his stocking-soles, till he fell gloriously leading a forlorn hope at the siege of--of--bless the name of the place! now I can’t for the life of me lay my tongue to it.” “Troy, perhaps,” suggested Terry, politely. “Belleisle, more likely,” put in Jack Sprattly; it was the first word he had uttered since they sat down, and he had a largish tartlet in his mouth as he spoke;--swallowing the morsel, he continued in a whisper to Biggington, next to whom he was seated--