'For a dinnar, sa.'
Martin started at him for a moment, and burst into a hearty laugh; to
which the negro, out of his natural good humour and desire to please, so
heartily responded, that his teeth shone like a gleam of light. 'You're
the pleasantest fellow I have seen yet,' said Martin clapping him on the
back, 'and give me a better appetite than bitters.'
With this sentiment he walked into the dining-room and slipped into
a chair next the colonel, which that gentleman (by this time nearly
through his dinner) had turned down in reserve for him, with its back
against the table.
It was a numerous company--eighteen or twenty perhaps. Of these some
five or six were ladies, who sat wedged together in a little phalanx by
themselves. All the knives and forks were working away at a rate that
was quite alarming; very few words were spoken; and everybody seemed to
eat his utmost in self-defence, as if a famine were expected to set in
before breakfast time to-morrow morning, and it had become high time
to assert the first law of nature. The poultry, which may perhaps be
considered to have formed the staple of the entertainment--for there was
a turkey at the top, a pair of ducks at the bottom, and two fowls in the
middle--disappeared as rapidly as if every bird had had the use of its
wings, and had flown in desperation down a human throat.
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