"And when, Mr. Feeder—"
But Mr. Feeder, who saw that Johnson must break out again, and who knew that the Doctor would never come to a period before the young gentlemen until he had finished all he meant to say, couldn’t keep his eye off Johnson; and thus was caught in the fact of not looking at the Doctor, who consequently stopped.
"I beg your pardon, Sir," said Mr. Feeder, reddening. "I beg your pardon, Doctor Blimber."
"And when," said the Doctor, raising his voice, "when, Sir, as we read, and have no reason to doubt—incredible as it may appear to the vulgar of our time—the brother of Vitellius prepared for him a feast, in which were served, of fish, two thousand dishes—"
"Take some water, Johnson—dishes, Sir," said Mr. Feeder.
"Of various sorts of fowl, five thousand dishes."
"Or try a crust of bread," said Mr. Feeder.
"And one dish," pursued Doctor Blimber, raising his voice still higher as he looked all round the table, "called, from its enormous dimensions, the Shield of Minerva, and made, among other costly ingredients, of the brains of pheasants—"
"Ow, ow, ow!" (from Johnson.)
"Woodcocks,"
"Ow, ow, ow!"
"The sounds of the fish called scari,"
"You ’ll burst some vessel in your head," said Mr. Feeder. "You had better let it come."
"And the spawn of the lamprey, brought from the Carpathian Sea," pursued the Doctor, in his severest voice; "when we read of costly entertainments such as these, and still remember, that we have a Titus,"
"What would be your mother’s feelings if you died of apoplexy!" said Mr. Feeder.
"A Domitian,"
"And you ’re blue, you know," said Mr. Feeder.
"A Nero, a Tiberius, a Caligula, a Heliogabalus, and many more," pursued the Doctor; "it is, Mr. Feeder—if you are doing me the honour to attend—remarkable; very remarkable, Sir—"
But Johnson, unable to suppress it any longer, burst at that moment into such an overwhelming fit of coughing, that although both his immediate neighbours thumped him on the back, and Mr. Feeder himself held a glass of water to his lips, and the butler walked him up and down several times between his own chair and the sideboard, like a sentry, it was a full five minutes before he was moderately composed. Then there was a profound silence.
"Gentlemen," said Doctor Blimber, "rise for Grace! Cornelia, lift Dombey down"—nothing of whom but his scalp was accordingly seen above the table-cloth. "Johnson will repeat to me to-morrow morning before breakfast, without book, and from the Greek Testament, the first chapter of the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Ephesians. We will resume our studies, Mr. Feeder, in half-an-hour."
The young gentlemen bowed and withdrew. Mr. Feeder did likewise. During the half-hour, the young gentlemen, broken into pairs, loitered arm-in-arm up and down a small piece of ground behind the house, or endeavoured to kindle a spark of animation in the breast of Briggs. But
