personages detached from the railing, were
the two fortunate possessors of the celebrated
monstrous unknown barking fish, just caught
(frequently just caught off Namelesston),
who carried him about in a hamper, and
pressed the scientific to look in at the lid.

The sands of the hour had all run out
when we got back to the Temeraire. Says
Bullfinch then to the youth in livery, with
boldness: "Lavatory!"

When we arrived at the family vault with
a skylight, which the youth in livery presented
as the Institution sought, we had
already whisked off our cravats and coats;
but finding ourselves in the presence of
an evil smell, and no linen but two crumpled
towels newly damp from the countenances
of two somebody elses, we put on our
cravats and coats again, and fled unwashed
to the coffee-room.

There, the waiter who ought to wait
upon us had set forth our knives and forks
and glasses, on the cloth whose dirty acquaintance
we had already had the pleasure
of making, and whom we were pleased to
recognise by the familiar expression of its
stains. And now there occurred the truly
surprising phenomenon that the waiter who
ought not to wait upon us, swooped down
upon us, clutched our loaf of bread, and
vanished with the same.

Bullfinch with distracted eyes was following
this unaccountable figure "out at
the portal," like the Ghost in Hamlet,
when the waiter who ought to wait upon
us jostled against it, carrying a tureen.

"Waiter!" said a severe diner, lately
finished, perusing his bill fiercely through
his eye-glass.

The waiter put down our tureen on a
remote side table, and went to see what
was amiss in this new direction.

"This is not right, you know, waiter.
Look here. Here's yesterday's sherry,
one and eightpence, and here we are again,
two shillings. And what does Sixpence
mean?"

So far from knowing what sixpence
meant, the waiter protested that he didn't
know what anything meant. He wiped
the perspiration from his clammy brow,
and said it was impossible to do it—not
particularising what—and the kitchen was
so far off.

"Take the bill to the bar, and get it
altered," said Mr. Indignation Cocker: so to
call him.

The waiter took it, looked intensely at it,
didn't seem to like the idea of taking it to
the bar, and submitted as a new light upon
the case, that perhaps sixpence meant six
pence.

"I tell you again," said Mr. Indignation
Cocker, "here's yesterday's sherry—can't
you see it?—one and eightpence, and here
we are again, two shillings. What do you
make of one and eightpence and two shillings?"

Totally unable to make anything of one
and eightpence and two shillings, the waiter
went out to try if anybody else could;
merely casting a helpless backward glance
at Bullfinch, in acknowledgment of his
pathetic entreaties for our soup tureen.
After a pause, during which Mr. Indignation
Cocker read a newspaper, and coughed
defiant coughs, Bullfinch rose to get the
tureen, when the waiter reappeared and
brought it: dropping Mr. Indignation
Cocker's altered bill on Mr. Indignation
Cocker's table as he came along.

"It's quite impossible to do it, gentlemen,"
murmured the waiter; " and the
kitchen is so far off."

"Well. You don't keep the house; it's
not your fault, we suppose. Bring some
sherry."

"Waiter!" From Mr. Indignation Cocker,
with a new and burning sense of injury
upon him.

The waiter, arrested on his way to our
sherry, stopped short, and came back to see
what was wrong now.

"Will you look here? This is worse
than before. Do you understand? Here's
yesterday's sherry one and eightpence, and
here we are again two shillings. And
what the devil does Ninepence mean?"

This new portent utterly confounded the
waiter. He wrung his napkin, and mutely
appealed to the ceiling.

"Waiter, fetch that sherry," says Bullfinch,
in open wrath and revolt.

"I want to know," persisted Mr. Indignation
Cocker, "the meaning of Ninepence.
I want to know the meaning of
sherry one and eightpence yesterday, and
of here we are again two shillings. Send
somebody."

The distracted waiter got out of the
room, under pretext of sending somebody,
and by that means got our wine. But the
instant he appeared with our decanter,
Mr. Indignation Cocker descended on him
again.

"Waiter!"

"You will now have the goodness to
attend to our dinner, waiter," says Bullfinch,
sternly.

"I am very sorry, but it's quite impossible