And the nearer the time came the more touchy she got.

If I suggested anything, she took it as a personal slight to herself; if I was bold enough to differ from her, she was mortally offended; if I ventured to express the slightest impatience, she turned crusty and threatened to let me shift for myself.
The affair, too, naturally got wind amongst my fellow-lodgers, who one and all avowed that they would not give up their right to the parlour, and indulged in all manner of witticisms at my cost and the cost of my party.

I pacified them as best I could by promising them the reversion of the feast, and took meekly all their gibes and jests when they begged to be allowed to come in to dessert and hear the speeches, or volunteered to come and hand round the champagne, or clear away the "turtle-soup," and so on.
But the nearer the fatal day came the more dejected and nervous I got.
Mrs Nash's parlour was really a disreputable sort of room, and after all I had had no experience of suppers, and was positive I should not know what to do when the time came.

I had neither the flow of conversation of Doubleday, nor the store of stories of Daly, nor Whipcord's sporting gossip, nor the Twins' self-possessed humour.

And if my guests should turn critical I was a lost man; that I knew.