What a quiet world this would be if everyone would smoke!  I suspect that the reason why the fairer sex decry thee is, that thou art the cause of silence.  The ancients knew thee not, or the lips of Harpocrates would have been closed with a cigar, and his forefinger removed from the mouth unto the temple.

Half an hour was passed without any observation from our party, as the room gradually filled with the volumes of smoke, which wreathed and curled in graceful lines, as they ascended in obedience to the unchangeable laws of nature.

Hilton’s pipe was first exhausted; he shook the ashes on the table.  “A very melancholy business, indeed!” observed he, as he refilled.  The rest nodded a grand assent; the pipe was relighted; and all was silent as before.

Another pipe is empty.  “Looking at this inventory,” said the curate, “I should imagine the articles to be of no great value.  One fur cap, one round hat, one pair of plush breeches, one—­; they are not worth a couple of pounds altogether,” continued he, stuffing the tobacco into his pipe, which he relighted, and no more was said.  Nicholas was the third in, or rather out. “It appears to me,” observed he;—­but what appeared is lost, as some new idea flitted across his imagination, and he commenced his second pipe without further remark.

Some ten minutes after this, Mr Spinney handed the pot of porter to the curate, and subsequently to the rest of the party.  They all took largely, then puffed away as before.

How long this cabinet-council might have continued, it is impossible to say; but “Silence,” who was in “the chair,” was soon afterwards driven from his post of honour by the most implacable of his enemies, a “woman’s tongue.”

“Well, Mr Forster! well, gentlemen! do you mean to poison me?  Have you made smell and dirt enough?  How long is this to last, I should like to know?” cried Mrs Forster, entering the room.  “I tell you what, Mr Forster, you had better hang up a sign at once, and keep an ale-house.  Let the sign be a Fool’s Head, like your own.  I wonder you are not ashamed of yourself, Mr Curate; you that ought to set an example to your parishioners!”

But Mr Dragwell did not admire such remonstrance; so taking his pipe out of his mouth, he retorted—­“If your husband does put up a sign, I recommend him to stick you up as the ‘Good Woman;’ that would be without your head—­Ha, ha, ha!”

“He, he, he!”

“He, he, he! you pitiful ’natomy,” cried Mrs Forster, in a rage, turning to the clerk, as she dared not revenge herself upon the curate.  “Take that for your He, he, he!” and she swung round the empty pewter pot, which she snatched from the table, upon the bald pericranium of Mr Spinney, who tumbled off his chair, and rolled upon the sanded floor.

The remainder of the party were on their legs in an instant.  Newton jerked the weapon out of his mother’s hands, and threw it in a corner of the room.  Nicholas was aghast; he surmised that his turn would come next; and so it proved—­“An’t you ashamed of yourself, Mr Forster, to see me treated in this way—­bringing a parcel of drunken men into the house to insult me?  Will you order them out, or not, sir?—­Are we to have quiet or not?”