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  Title: A Little Dinner at Timmins's

  Author: William Makepeace Thackeray

  Release Date: October, 2001 [Etext #2859]

  Edition: 10

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  A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S.

  by William Makepeace Thackeray

  I.

  Mr. and Mrs. Fitzroy Timmins live in Lilliput Street, that neat

  little street which runs at right angles with the Park and

  Brobdingnag Gardens. It is a very genteel neighborhood, and I need

  not say they are of a good family.

  Especially Mrs. Timmins, as
her mamma is always telling Mr. T.

  They are Suffolk people, and distantly related to the Right

  honorable the Earl of Bungay.

  Besides his house in Lilliput Street, Mr. Timmins has chambers in

  Fig-tree Court, Temple, and goes the Northern Circuit.

  The other day, when there was a slight difference about the payment

  of fees between the great Parliamentary Counsel and the Solicitors,

  Stoke and Pogers, of Great George Street, sent the papers of the

  Lough Foyle and Lough Corrib Junction Railway to Mr. Fitzroy

  Timmins, who was so elated that he instantly purchased a couple of

  looking-glasses for his drawing-rooms (the front room is 16 by 12,

  and the back, a tight but elegant apartment, 10 ft. 6 by 8 ft. 4),

  a coral for the baby, two new dresses for Mrs. Timmins, and a

  little rosewood desk, at the Pantechnicon, for which Rosa had long

  been sighing, with crumpled legs, emerald-green and gold morocco

  top, and drawers all over.

  Mrs. Timmins is a very pretty poetess (her "Lines to a Faded Tulip"

  and her "Plaint of Plinlimmon" appeared in one of last year's

  Keepsakes); and Fitzroy, as he impressed a kiss on the snowy

  forehead of his bride, pointed out to her, in one of the

  innumerable pockets of the desk, an elegant ruby-tipped pen, and

  six charming little gilt blank books, marked "My Books," which Mrs.

  Fitzroy might fill, he said, (he is an Oxford man, and very

  polite,) "with the delightful productions of her Muse." Besides

  these books, there was pink paper, paper with crimson edges, lace

  paper, all stamped with R. F. T. (Rosa Fitzroy Timmins) and the

  hand and battle-axe, the crest of the Timminses (and borne at

  Ascalon by Roaldus de Timmins, a crusader, who is now buried in the

  Temple Church, next to Serjeant Snooks), and yellow, pink, light-

  blue and other scented sealing waxes, at the service of Rosa when

  she chose to correspond with her friends.

  Rosa, you may be sure, jumped with joy at the sight of this sweet

  present; called her Charles (his first name is Samuel, but they

  have sunk that) the best of men; embraced him a great number of

  times, to the edification of her buttony little page, who stood at

  the landing; and as soon as he was gone to chambers, took the new

  pen and a sweet sheet of paper, and began to compose a poem.

  "What shall it be about?" was naturally her first thought. "What

  should be a young mother's first inspiration?" Her child lay on

  the sofa asleep before her; and she began in her neatest hand--

  "LINES

  "ON MY SON BUNGAY DE BRACY GASHLEIGH TYMMYNS, AGED TEN MONTHS.

  "Tuesday.

  "How beautiful! how beautiful thou seemest,

  My boy, my precious one, my rosy babe!

  Kind angels hover round thee, as thou dreamest:

  Soft lashes hide thy beauteous azure eye which gleamest."

  "Gleamest? thine eye which gleamest? Is that grammar?" thought

  Rosa, who had puzzled her little brains for some time with this

  absurd question, when the baby woke. Then the cook came up to ask

  about dinner; then Mrs. Fundy slipped over from No. 27 (they are

  opposite neighbors, and made an acquaintance through Mrs. Fundy's

  macaw); and a thousand things happened. Finally, there was no

  rhyme to babe except Tippoo Saib (against whom Major Gashleigh,

  Rosa's grandfather, had distinguished himself), and so she gave up

  the little poem about her De Bracy.

  Nevertheless, when Fitzroy returned from chambers to take a walk

  with his wife in the Park, as he peeped through the rich tapestry

  hanging which divided the two drawing-rooms, he found his dear girl

  still seated at the desk, and writing, writing away with her ruby

  pen as fast as it could scribble.

  "What a genius that child has!" he said; "why, she is a second Mrs.