After she had asked every sort of thing about you under the sun, she kept giving longing glances at the dummy's cards; so I said, "Oh! Aunt Maria, I am afraid I am keeping you from your whist." As soon as I could make her hear, you should have seen how she hopped up like a two-year-old into the vacant seat; and they were far more serious about it than any one was at Nazeby, where they had hundreds on, and Aunt Maria and the others only played for counters--that long mother-o'-pearl fish kind. I looked at a book on the table, Lady Blessington's "Book of Beauty," and I see then every one got born with champagne-bottle shoulders. Had they been paring them for generations before, I wonder? Because old John, the keeper at Hendon, told me once that the best fox-terriers arrive now without any tails, their mothers' and grand-mothers' and great-grandmothers' having been cut off for so long; but I wonder, if the fashion changed, how could they get long tails again? There must be some way, because all of us now have square shoulders. But what was I saying? Oh! yes, when I had finished the "Beauty Book," I heard Aunt Maria getting so cross with the old boy opposite her. "You've revoked, Major Orwell," she said, whatever that means. [Sidenote: _An Old English Dinner_] Then hot spiced port came in--it was such a close night--and they all had some, and so did I, and it was good; and then candles came. _Such_ lovely silver, and so beautifully cleaned; and Aunt and Uncle kissed me. I dodged Lady Farrington's false teeth, because, after her cap incident, she might have bitten me. And Uncle said, "Too late, too late for a little one to sit up--no beauty sleep!" And Aunt Maria said, "Tut, tut!" and I thought it must be the middle of the night--it felt like it. But do you know, Mamma, when I got upstairs to my room it was only _half-past ten!_