A bright glowing day was the following one, the day of the dinner party; and right gladly did the golden sun beam out from the deep fathomless sky, as if from his lofty look-out he were aware of what was going on in this world below, and rejoiced in the failure of the evil machinations which had been so long disturbing the tranquillity of the worthy individuals who have figured in this history. And fortunate it was that neither clouds nor rain obscured his face, for had the latter been added to the cares which the approaching dinner-party had already accumulated upon the culinary department of Harson's household, the house-keeper in the tall cap with stiff ribbons would have gone stark-mad. Miserable woman! how she worked and fumed, and panted and tugged, and kneaded and rolled, and stuffed and seasoned, and skewered and basted, and beat, on that day! From soup to dessert and from dessert to soup, over and over again, she toiled; fish, flesh, fowl, vegetables, gravies, were all mingled in her head helter-skelter. She had dreamed of nothing else during the whole of the previous night, excepting a short interlude in the aforesaid dream, when she was night-mared by a fat pig, bestrode by a half-starved boy, who was all eyes. And now, as the day waned and the hour of the dinner approached, her ferment increased, until, to use a metaphor, she had worked herself up into a mental lather. Her voice was in every quarter, and so was her quick, hurried step. She was in the entry, up stairs, in the pantry, in the kitchen and in the cellar; at the street-door giving orders to the grocer's dirty boy to bring the cinnamon and allspice, and not to forget the sugar and butter, and to be sure to recollect the anchovies and pickles. The next moment she was scolding the butcher, because he had been late with the chops and cutlets; and every five minutes she thrust her head into the room to look at the clock, lest Time should steal a march upon her. Eleven, twelve, one, two o'clock. The tumult increased. Mrs. Chowles, punctual to her promise, made her appearance; forthwith dived into the kitchen, and did not emerge until dinner-time. The only person utterly unmoved was Harson, who had attended to his part of the business by looking after the wine, and who now sat with his feet to the fire, resolved to trouble his head about nothing, and apparently more asleep than awake. At times, however, he rose and went to one corner of the room, where a small boy who seemed to be worn down by suffering, lay coiled up and sound asleep on a chair-cushion. The old man bent over him, gently parted the hair from his forehead, and then rising up, somewhat red in the face from the exertion, rubbed his hands one over the other by way of indicating that all was as it should be; stole back to his seat on tiptoe, lest he should awaken him, and forthwith relapsed into his former state of dreamy abstraction. Nothing could arouse him; not even the house-keeper