text: " In the mean time the guests relieved of the presence of the Honourable Sniftky are rather more at their ease; a baronet (who was lord mayor or something of that sort) waxes jocular and gives decided indications of something like "how came you so;" the man at the foot of the table contradicts one of the diners-out and is contradicted in turn by the baronet; the foreign count is in deep conversation with a hard-featured man supposed to be a stockjobber; the clergyman extols the labours of the host in the matter of the Cannibal Islands' Aborigines Protection Society in which his reverence takes an interest; the claimant of the dormant peerage retails his pedigree pulling to pieces the attorney-general who has expressed an opinion hostile to his pretensions