One on the top of the other the rest of the company followed the

Ablewhites, till we had the whole tale of them complete. Including the

family, they were twenty-four in all. It was a noble sight to see, when

they were settled in their places round the dinner-table, and the Rector

of Frizinghall (with beautiful elocution) rose and said grace.

There is no need to worry you with a list of the guests. You will meet

none of them a second time--in my part of the story, at any rate--with

the exception of two.

Those two sat on either side of Miss Rachel, who, as queen of the day,

was naturally the great attraction of the party. On this occasion she

was more particularly the centre-point towards which everybody's

Advertisement..

eyes were directed; for (to my lady's secret annoyance) she wore her

wonderful birthday present, which eclipsed all the rest--the Moonstone.

It was without any setting when it had been placed in her hands; but

that universal genius, Mr. Franklin, had contrived, with the help of his

neat fingers and a little bit of silver wire, to fix it as a brooch in

the bosom of her white dress. Everybody wondered at the prodigious size

and beauty of the Diamond, as a matter of course. But the only two of

the company who said anything out of the common way about it were those

two guests I have mentioned, who sat by Miss Rachel on her right hand

and her left.

The guest on her left was Mr. Candy, our doctor at Frizinghall.

This was a pleasant, companionable little man, with the drawback,

however, I must own, of being too fond, in season and out of season, of

his joke, and of his plunging in rather a headlong manner into talk

with strangers, without waiting to feel his way first. In society he was

constantly making mistakes, and setting people unintentionally by

the ears together. In his medical practice he was a more prudent man;

picking up his discretion (as his enemies said) by a kind of instinct,

and proving to be generally right where more carefully conducted doctors

turned out to be wrong.

What HE said about the Diamond to Miss Rachel was said, as usual, by way

of a mystification or joke. He gravely entreated her (in the interests

of science) to let him take it home and burn it. "We will first heat it,

Miss Rachel," says the doctor, "to such and such a degree; then we

will expose it to a current of air; and, little by little--puff!--we

evaporate the Diamond, and spare you a world of anxiety about the safe

keeping of a valuable precious stone!" My lady, listening with rather a

careworn expression on her face, seemed to wish that the doctor had been

in earnest, and that he could have found Miss Rachel zealous enough in

the cause of science to sacrifice her birthday gift.




Most Popular