CHAPTER XXXV.
LOYAL, AYE LOYAL One of the dinners at the Darling Arms, and perhaps the most brilliant and exciting of the whole, because even the waiters understood the subject, was the entertainment given in the month of December, A.D.
1803, not only by the officers of two regiments quartered for the time near Stonnington, but also by all the leading people round about those parts, in celebration of the great work done by His Majesty's 38-gun frigate Leda.

Several smaller dinners had been consumed already, by way of practice, both for the cooks and the waiters and the chairman, and Mr.John Prater, who always stood behind him, with a napkin in one hand and a corkscrew in the other, and his heart in the middle, ready either to assuage or stimulate.

As for the guests, it was always found that no practice had been required.
"But now, but now"-- as Mr.Prater said, when his wife pretended to make nothing of it, for no other purpose than to aggravate him, because she thought that he was making too much money, in proportion to what he was giving her--"now we shall see what Springhaven can do for the good of the Country and the glory of herself.

Two bottles and a half a head is the lowest that can be charged for, with the treble X outside, and the punch to follow after.

His lordship is the gentleman to keep the bottle going." For the Lord-Lieutenant of the county, the popular Marquis of Southdown, had promised to preside at this grand dinner; and everybody knew what that meant.