still--The Dinner.
If the parson preach a little better sermon than usual, it is
because his nine children have not been forgotten by Lady Bountiful,
and are actually going to have--A Dinner.
My Lady Bountiful in her turn may go to church, and appear devoutly
removed from the _mundus edibilis_, yet if you could look into her
reflections, you would perceive that she has but one thought--The
Dinner. Do you suppose, much as the youths from Oxford and their
friend the captain, from London, are devoted to mamma and her
daughters, they are not at the same time being eaten up, as it were,
devoured, by the intense wish for the hour to come when they may
partake of--That Dinner!
Sir Humphrey has asked a particularly large party down this Christmas,
and seems to have forgotten nobody he ever knew. Not a poor relation
but has been remembered, and things are on a grander scale than usual.
The candles build famously, set in the chimney candelabra; the logs
are all of the biggest, and as for the Yule himself, he is a
veritable Brobdignag; the staircases drop flowers, and holly and
mistletoe hang all about. Everything shines, and gleams, and glows.
There is to be a boar's head, with, no lack of mustard and minstrelsy,
and nothing eatable or drinkable that pertains to Christmas will be
wanting. Carols, and waits, and contended tenants; merry chimes and
clinking glasses; twanging fiddles and the rush down the middle--
nothing is spared and nobody is forgotten. So the hour draws on, the
guests pull through the dreary day (for as I have said before,
everything on Christmas day gives place to the dinner), and at last
the dinner becomes an absolute fact, something to be apprehended,
sat down to, and finally eaten. It _is_ eaten, and everyone has come
into the long hall, at one end of which the Yule burns. There is
merry talk, and it is easier now for the captain to devote himself
to the girls, having left the dinner behind; there is talk, too, of
a little wonder at the gorgeousness of the dinner, for Sir Humphrey
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