command, brought into active and efficient operation. Mr Wardle

proposed Mr Pickwick; Mr Pickwick proposed the old lady. Mr

Snodgrass proposed Mr Wardle; Mr Wardle proposed Mr Snodgrass.

One of the poor relations proposed Mr Tupman, and the other poor

relation proposed Mr Winkle; all was happiness and festivity, until the

mysterious disappearance of both the poor relations beneath the

table, warned the party that it was time to adjourn.

At dinner they met again, after a five-and-twenty mile walk,

undertaken by the males at Wardle's recommendation, to get rid of the

effects of the wine at breakfast. The poor relations had kept in bed all

day, with the view of attaining the same happy consummation, but, as

they had been unsuccessful, they stopped there. Mr Weller kept the

domestics in a state of perpetual hilarity; and the fat boy divided his

time into small alternate allotments of eating and sleeping.

The dinner was as hearty an affair as the breakfast, and was quite as

noisy, without the tears. Then came the dessert and some more

toasts. Then came the tea and coffee; and then, the ball.

The best sitting-room at Manor Farm was a good, long, dark- panelled

room with a high chimney-piece, and a capacious chimney, up which

you could have driven one of the new patent cabs, wheels and all. At

the upper end of the room, seated in a shady bower of holly and

evergreens were the two best fiddlers, and the only harp, in all

Muggleton. In all sorts of recesses, and on all kinds of brackets, stood

massive old silver candlesticks with four branches each. The carpet

was up, the candles burned bright, the fire blazed and crackled on the

hearth, and merry voices and light-hearted laughter rang through the

room. If any of the old English yeomen had turned into fairies when

they died, it was just the place in which they would have held their

revels.

If anything could have added to the interest of this agreeable scene, it

would have been the remarkable fact of Mr Pickwick's appearing

without his gaiters, for the first time within the memory of his oldest

friends.

'You mean to dance?' said Wardle.

'Of course I do,' replied Mr Pickwick. 'Don't you see I am dressed for

the purpose?' Mr Pickwick called attention to his speckled silk

stockings, and smartly tied pumps.

YOU in silk stockings!' exclaimed Mr Tupman jocosely.

The Pickwick Papers