And so, in a word, the dinner commenced, and was presently ended in a
similar fashion. Gray pursued his unfortunate guest with the most queer
and outrageous description of his struggles, misery, and poverty. He
described how he cleaned the knives when they were first married; and
how he used to drag the children in a little cart; how his wife could
toss pancakes; and what parts of his dress she made. He told Tibbits,
his clerk (who was in fact the functionary who had brought the beer from
the public-house, which Mrs. Fanny had fetched from the neighbouring
apartment)--to fetch 'the bottle of port-wine,' when the dinner was
over; and told Goldmore as wonderful a history about the way in which
that bottle of wine had come into his hands as any of his former stories
had been. When the repast was all over, and it was near time to move
to the play, and Mrs. Gray had retired, and we were sitting ruminating
rather silently over the last glasses of the port, Gray suddenly breaks
the silence by slapping Goldmore on the shoulder, and saying, 'Now,
Goldmore, tell me something.'
'What?' asks Croesus.
'Haven't you had a good dinner?'
Goldmore started, as if a sudden truth had just dawned upon him. He HAD
had a good dinner; and didn't know it until then. The three mutton-chops
consumed by him were best of the mutton kind; the potatoes were perfect
of their order; as for the rolypoly, it was too good.
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