Externally, Mr. Grewgious showed no signs of being mellowed by these glowing vintages.  Instead of his drinking them, they might have been poured over him in his high-dried snuff form, and run to waste, for any lights and shades they caused to flicker over his face.  Neither was his manner influenced.  But, in his wooden way, he had observant eyes for Edwin; and when at the end of dinner, he motioned Edwin back to his own easy-chair in the fireside corner, and Edwin sank luxuriously into it after very brief remonstrance, Mr. Grewgious, as he turned his seat round towards the fire too, and smoothed his head and face, might have been seen looking at his visitor between his smoothing fingers.

‘Bazzard!’ said Mr. Grewgious, suddenly turning to him.

‘I follow you, sir,’ returned Bazzard; who had done his work of consuming meat and drink in a workmanlike manner, though mostly in speechlessness.

‘I drink to you, Bazzard; Mr. Edwin, success to Mr. Bazzard!’

‘Success to Mr. Bazzard!’ echoed Edwin, with a totally unfounded appearance of enthusiasm, and with the unspoken addition:  ’What in, I wonder!’

‘And May!’ pursued Mr. Grewgious—­’I am not at liberty to be definite—­May!—­my conversational powers are so very limited that I know I shall not come well out of this—­May!—­it ought to be put imaginatively, but I have no imagination—­May!—­the thorn of anxiety is as nearly the mark as I am likely to get—­May it come out at last!’

Mr. Bazzard, with a frowning smile at the fire, put a hand into his tangled locks, as if the thorn of anxiety were there; then into his waistcoat, as if it were there; then into his pockets, as if it were there.  In all these movements he was closely followed by the eyes of Edwin, as if that young gentleman expected to see the thorn in action.  It was not produced, however, and Mr. Bazzard merely said:  ‘I follow you, sir, and I thank you.’

‘I am going,’ said Mr. Grewgious, jingling his glass on the table with one hand, and bending aside under cover of the other, to whisper to Edwin, ’to drink to my ward.  But I put Bazzard first.  He mightn’t like it else.’

This was said with a mysterious wink; or what would have been a wink, if, in Mr. Grewgious’s hands, it could have been quick enough.  So Edwin winked responsively, without the least idea what he meant by doing so.

‘And now,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ’I devote a bumper to the fair and fascinating Miss Rosa.  Bazzard, the fair and fascinating Miss Rosa!’

‘I follow you, sir,’ said Bazzard, ‘and I pledge you!’

‘And so do I!’ said Edwin.

‘Lord bless me,’ cried Mr. Grewgious, breaking the blank silence which of course ensued:  though why these pauses should come upon us when we have performed any small social rite, not directly inducive of self-examination or mental despondency, who can tell?  ’I am a particularly Angular man, and yet I fancy (if I may use the word, not having a morsel of fancy), that I could draw a picture of a true lover’s state of mind, to-night.’