"There was one of those three-story-high cut-glass things, with tiers of cups on circular platforms--I don't know what you call 'em--filled with shaky jelly stuff and cream all foamy on top of it," one more than commonly observant young man told me afterwards. "That was in the middle of the table. And two silver castors with red Bohemian glass bottles full of vinegar and oil and things like that, you know, on each side of it; you could whirl 'em around, and pick out the bottle you wanted. And there were shallow glass dishes with jelly and two tall ones like big champagne-glasses, with kind of thick sticky preserves--they had lids, the tall ones. After the soup, everything came on at once, game, prairie-chicken, at the doctor's end, and just plain John Smith chicken roasted, about the middle, and boiled leg of mutton with this white sauce that has hard-boiled egg and little green things like pickled shoe-buttons"--he meant capers--"all through it, for J. B. to carve, and oysters and a ham, and four or five vegetables all over the table. There were the funniest old steel knives with ivory handles, and thin old silver forks and spoons with the doctor's crest, and a motto, '_Foy tiendrai_,' whatever that may mean, on the backs. Everybody had half-a-dozen wine-glasses; and to begin with there were four decanters of sherry, one at each corner of the table, and when we'd finished those--well, you _had_ to have a lot of liquor to get through a dinner like that, you know--Huddesley brought out three other kinds." J. B. conscientiously carving the joint at his end of the table, viewed the shrinkage in the decanters with considerable uneasiness. There was nothing prim or kill-joy about J. B. He had no idea of affecting the virtue that denies to another man his cakes and ale. But he was a hard-headed young fellow, not given to self-indulgence of any kind; and although in the State of his birth and earlier years over-drinking was anything but uncommon, he confessed to a sort of contemptuous impatience with the man who did not know when he had enough. It seemed as if one or two of the present company had nearly reached that desirable condition; and still Huddesley travelled about the table, impartial as Fate herself, leaving no glass unfilled; or even half-full. J. B. could see Doctor Vardaman's face but imperfectly around the erection of custard-cups in the centre, but he thought an anxiety equal to his own appeared and vanished there by turns. Once or twice the old gentleman seemed on the edge of signalling Huddesley to hold his hand, but some feeling rooted, most probably in his old-fashioned notions of hospitality, must have restrained him.