With a hope of being similarly remembered in her will, the poor relations of Miss Morbid continued to drink the “warm without,” which she administered to them every Sunday, under the name of Tea: and Hogarth would have desired no better subject for a picture than was presented by their physiognomies. Some pursed up their lips, as if resolved that the nauseous beverage should never enter them; others compressed their mouths, as if to prevent it from rushing out again. One took it mincingly, in sips,--another gulped it down in desperation,--a third, in a fit of absence, continued to stir very superfluously with his spoon; and there was one shrewd old gentleman, who by a little dexterous by-play, used to bestow the favour of his small souchong on a sick geranium. Now and then an astonished Stranger would retain a half cupful of the black dose in his mouth, and stare round at his fellow guests, as if tacitly putting to them the very question of Mathews’s Yorkshireman in the mail coach--“Coompany!--oop or doon?” The greatest sufferers, however, were Miss Morbid’s two nephews, still in the morning of their youth, and boy-like, far more inclined to “sip the sweets” than to “hail the dawn.” They had formerly looked on their Aunt’s house as peculiarly a Dulce Domum. Prior to her sudden conversion she had been famous for the manufacture of a sort of hard bake, commonly called Toffy or Taffy,--but now, alas! “Taffy was not at home,” and there was nothing else to invite a call. Currant tart is tart indeed without sugar; and as for the green gooseberries, they always tasted, as the young gentlemen affirmed, “like a quart of berries sharpened to a pint.” In short it always required six pennyworth of lollipops and bullseyes, a lick of honey, a dip of treacle, and a pick at a grocer’s hogshead, to sweeten a visit at Aunt Morbid’s.