not all; for a smartly-dressed girl, with a bright eye and a neat ankle,

was laying a very clean white cloth on the table; and as Tom sat with

his slippered feet on the fender, and his back to the open door, he saw

a charming prospect of the bar reflected in the glass over the chimney-

piece, with delightful rows of green bottles and gold labels, together

with jars of pickles and preserves, and cheeses and boiled hams, and

rounds of beef, arranged on shelves in the most tempting and

delicious array. Well, this was comfortable too; but even this was not

all - for in the bar, seated at tea at the nicest possible little table,

drawn close up before the brightest possible little fire, was a buxom

widow of somewhere about eight-and-forty or thereabouts, with a face

as comfortable as the bar, who was evidently the landlady of the

house, and the supreme ruler over all these agreeable possessions.

There was only one drawback to the beauty of the whole picture, and

that was a tall man - a very tall man - in a brown coat and bright

basket buttons, and black whiskers and wavy black hair, who was

seated at tea with the widow, and who it required no great penetration

to discover was in a fair way of persuading her to be a widow no

longer, but to confer upon him the privilege of sitting down in that

bar, for and during the whole remainder of the term of his natural life.

Tom Smart was by no means of an irritable or envious disposition,

but somehow or other the tall man with the brown coat and the bright

basket buttons did rouse what little gall he had in his composition,

and did make him feel extremely indignant, the more especially as he

could now and then observe, from his seat before the glass, certain

little affectionate familiarities passing between the tall man and the

widow, which sufficiently denoted that the tall man was as high in

favour as he was in size. Tom was fond of hot punch - I may venture

to say he was VERY fond of hot punch - and after he had seen the

vixenish mare well fed and well littered down, and had eaten every bit

of the nice little hot dinner which the widow tossed up for him with

her own hands, he just ordered a tumbler of it by way of experiment.

Now, if there was one thing in the whole range of domestic art, which

the widow could manufacture better than another, it was this

identical article; and the first tumbler was adapted to Tom Smart's

taste with such peculiar nicety, that he ordered a second with the

least possible delay. Hot punch is a pleasant thing, gentlemen - an

extremely pleasant thing under any circumstances - but in that snug

old parlour, before the roaring fire, with the wind blowing outside till

every timber in the old house creaked again, Tom Smart found it

perfectly delightful. He ordered another tumbler, and then another - I

am not quite certain whether he didn't order another after that - but

the more he drank of the hot punch, the more he thought of the tall

man.

'‘Confound his impudence!’ said Tom to himself, ‘what business has

he in that snug bar? Such an ugly villain too!’ said Tom. ‘If the widow

The Pickwick Papers