“Mr. Cudmore, I am really very troublesome:  will you permit me to ask you?”—­

“Is it for the kettle, ma’am?” said Cudmore, with a voice that startled the whole room, disconcerting three whist parties, and so absorbing the attention of the people at loo, that the pool disappeared without any one being able to account for the circumstance.

“Is it for the kettle, ma’am?”

“If you will be so very kind,” lisped the hostess.

“Well, then, upon my conscience, you are impudent,” said Cudmore, with his face crimsoned to the ears, and his eyes flashing fire.

“Why, Mr. Cudmore,” began the lady, “why, really, this is so strange.  Why sir, what can you mean?”

“Just that,” said the imperturbable jib, who now that his courage was up, dared every thing.

“But sir, you must surely have misunderstood me.  I only asked for the kettle, Mr. Cudmore.”

“The devil a more,” said Cud, with a sneer.

“Well, then, of course”—­

“Well, then, I’ll tell you, of course,” said he, repeating her words; “the sorrow taste of the kettle, I’ll give you.  Call you own skip—­Blue Pether there—­damn me, if I’ll be your skip any longer.”

For the uninitiated I have only to add, that “skip” is the Trinity College appellation for servant, which was therefore employed by Mr. Cudmore, on this occasion, as expressing more contemptuously his sense of the degradation of the office attempted to be put upon him.  Having already informed my reader on some particulars of the company, I leave him to suppose how Mr. Cudmore’s speech was received.  Whist itself was at an end for that evening, and nothing but laughter, long, loud, and reiterated, burst from every corner of the room for hours after.

As I have so far travelled out of the record of my own peculiar confessions, as to give a leaf from what might one day form the matter of Mr. Cudmore’s, I must now make the only amende in my power, by honestly narrating, that short as my visit was to the classic precincts of this agreeable establishment, I did not escape without exciting my share of ridicule, though, I certainly had not the worst of the joke, and may, therefore, with better grace tell the story, which, happily for my readers, is a very brief one.  A custom prevailed in Mrs. Clanfrizzle’s household, which from my unhappy ignorance of boarding-houses, I am unable to predicate if it belong to the genera at large, or this one specimen in particular, however, it is a sufficiently curious fact, even though thereby hang no tale, for my stating it here.  The decanters on the dinner-table were never labelled, with their more appropriate designation of contents, whether claret, sherry, or port, but with the names of their respective owners, it being a matter of much less consequence that any individual at table should mix his wine, by pouring “port upon madeira,” than commit the truly legal offence of appropriating to his own use and benefit, even by mistake, his neighbour’s bottle.  However well the system may work among the regular members of the “domestic circle,” and I am assured that it does succeed extremely —­to the newly arrived guest, or uninitiated visitor, the affair is perplexing, and leads occasionally to awkward results.