It began the moment we sat down to breakfast. Mr. Wopsle said grace with theatrical declamation - as it now appears to me, something like a religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with Richard the Third - and ended with the very proper aspiration that we might be truly grateful. Upon which my sister fixed me with her eye, and said, in a low reproachful voice, "Do you hear that? Be grateful."
"Especially," said Mr. Pumblechook, "be grateful, boy, to them which brought you up by hand and kept you from the Beasts." Everybody then murmured "True!" and looked at me in a particularly unpleasant and personal manner.
Joe's station and influence were something feebler (if possible) when there was company, than when there was none. But he always aided and comforted me when he could, in some way of his own, and he always did so at dinner-time by giving me gravy, if there were any. There being plenty of gravy to-day, Joe spooned into my plate, at this point, about half a pint.
"True, sir, and true again,” pursued Mr. Wopsle in his deepest voice, and pointing his fork at my blushes, as if he were mentioning my Christian name. “Many a moral for the young in those loathsome creatures. Howl Beasts were the companions of the archangel. The godlessness of Howl Beasts is put before us, as an example to the young. What is detestable in a Howl Beast, is more detestable in a boy.”
"Or girl," suggested Mr. Hubble.
"Of course, or girl, Mr. Hubble," assented Mr. Wopsle, rather irritably, "but there is no girl present."
"Besides," said Mr. Pumblechook, turning sharp on me, "think what you've got to be grateful for. If you'd been born a Howler--"
"He was, if ever a child was," said my sister, most emphatically.
Joe gave me some more gravy.
"Well, but I mean a razor-clawed, steel-fanged Howler," said Mr. Pumblechook. "If he had been born such, would he have been here now? Not enjoying himself with his elders and betters, and improving himself with their conversation, and rolling in the lap of luxury. Would he have been doing that? No, he wouldn't. And what would have been your destination?" turning on me again. "You would have been shredded by iron and shackled in the same aboard a great ship, and the master would have come up to you as you lay in your filth, and he would have pierced your heart with a silver dagger and shed your blood and had your life. No bringing up by hand then. Not a bit of it!"
Joe offered me more gravy, which I was afraid to take.
There was a long pause, which Mrs. Joe did not find a welcomed addition to her proper holiday breakfast. "Have a little brandy, uncle," said my sister to Mr. Pumblechook.
O Heavens, it had come at last! He would find it was weak, he would say it was weak, and I was lost! I held tight to the leg of the table under the cloth, with both hands, and awaited my fate.
