but it manifestly flagged. She saw their eyes
continually directed towards the closed door,
and she hugged herself in her secret soul. She
went into the bedroom once or twice, and came
out saying that the patient was better, but too
much frightened to confront the strangers again.
And at last, with great amiability, but sufficient
plainness, she told them that she had a rehearsal
at the Gardens, and must beg them to excuse
her until dinner.

"That's a crammer, whispered the enterprising
manager to Thomas Tuttleshell; "there's
not so much as a donkey rehearsing at our shop
this morning." Whether his enterprise for the
moment happened to be a playhouse, an Italian
Opera, a garden, a circus, a giant, a dwarf, a
concert-room, a chapel, or a wild-beast show, Mr.
M'Variety always alluded to it as a shop.

"I suppose something's gone wrong," said
Tom, in a return whisper, "and she wants to
get rid of us. We'd better be off, Mac."

There was clearly nothing left but for the
visitors to go. The countess's face was wreathed
with smiles; but there was no mistaking the
gesture with which she showed them the door.
She bade them adieu until dinner, which was to
take place, it was arranged, at some hotel in the
West-end. Mr. M'Variety was to be of the
party, and the manager whispered, as he passed
out, that he had a proposition to make of a
nature which might not be wholly displeasing
to her. "Decidedly," she thought, "he means
to raise my salary." Her views, however, were
too ambitious, just then, to be satisfied with a
mere two or three pounds added to her weekly
stipend.

His lordship's Brougham would call for her
at six o'clock. That was clearly as it should
be, and another triumph. She was evidently
resuming her proper station.

            HOSPITALITY.

WHAT is hospitality?

I believe this to be a much more difficult
question to answer than it appears at first sight.
Our first idea of a hospitable person is of one
who "keeps open house," as it is said, and is
for ever getting his friends about him—a man,
in short, with plenty of money, a good cook,
and strong social instincts. Then, thinking a
little more deeply, and pursuing the subject
something further, you begin immediately to
get into difficulties. You reflect upon such
words as "hospital," and its tribe. You get
your Johnson's dictionary and look up your
subject. HOSPITABLE: Giving entertainment to
strangers; kind to strangers. HOSPITABLY:
With kindness to strangers. HOSPITALITY: The
practice of entertaining strangers. Strangers,
you think to yourself, always strangers. And
then you ask yourself how many times your
mutton has shed its gravy for the stranger, and
the answer which you have to give is
disheartening in the last degree. Bereft of
comfort, you fall back upon derivations.
HOSPITALITAS: Entertainment of friends, or guests.
This is much better. "Entertainment of
friends" will do admirably. Nothing like going
to the fountain-head. It is true that elsewhere
the "fountain-head" issues waters which taste
more bitterly to you, speaking of "hospes" as "a
host that receives strangers." Here is the
stranger turning up again. Altogether you
are mystified and in doubt about it, and before
long find yourself falling back upon the
argumentum ad hominem, and looking out among
your friends for cases of true and spurious
hospitality.

And so you turn over your different friends in
your mind, and ask yourself which among them
has the reputation of being most thoroughly
hospitable, and then, after but a very little
reflection, you naturally bethink you of the
Fingerglasses. Are they really hospitable, though?
you ask yourself.

The abode in which these good people exercise
the rites of hospitality is, in truth, never
empty. Dinner-parties come off there oftener
than in any other house in the square in which
they reside; and besides these superb banquets,
which are on a sufficiently magnificent scale, there
are lots of little dinners consisting of a bit of
fish, a curry, a leg of mutton and a pheasant, all
which viands are of the highest order of merit.
The Fingerglasses are always having company.
The pastrycook supplies as many Nesselrode
puddings to that house as to any in town, and it
is a serious thing to think what the bill for
champagne must come to in the course of the
year. You never meet the head of that family
in the street, but you feel that he looks bare and
incomplete, from not having a white tablecloth
spread out in front of him covered with plate,
and flowers and glass, as on the occasion of the
more solemn banquets, or adorned with a short-
grained saddle of mutton, as on the snugger and
less formal days of more limited hospitality.

But then comes the great question, Is this
really hospitality? Who are the guests that
surround this well-spread board, and for whom
are those good things provided?

Does Mrs. Fingerglass—for she, after all, is
at the bottom of all this hospitality—does she
invite those among her friends who, she feels,
stand the most in need of a dinner, or does she
not rather solicit the presence of those who have
already abundance of invitations, and who, if
they had not, could very well afford to pay for
their dinners themselves? It may be the result
of accident that she knows such people, but
somehow it happens that you meet none but
successful men at Mrs. Fingerglass's. Does
she ever ask Scalpel now, who is related to her
by the mother's side, and who is using frantic
exertions to make both ends meet in the up-hill
career of a young doctor? She never asks him.
It is not that she has any aversion to the medical
profession, for Sir Savile Rowley, Physician to
the Queen, is a constant guest at the house.
Does she ever invite Chopfall now? He used
to be an old friend of the Fingerglasses, but he
was thrown out by the failure of a certain speculation