CHAPTER X.
LITTLE MR. BOUNCER IS ASKED TO ACT AS SECOND IN A DUEL.
IS not pleasant when you are at a supper party, and anxious to enjoy yourself, to be struck forcibly on the nose by the whole of a cold duck that has been hurled into your face by an individual sitting immediately opposite to you at the table. When, too, the dish is also sent with the duck, and only by your own quickness of movement escapes your head, to be smashed to pieces against the wall behind your chair, the clatter made by its broken fragments is not agreeable to sensitive feelings. Mr. Bulpit, of "Skimmery," felt this; and felt, moreover, the hurt of the blow and the indignity to which he had been publicly exposed. Being helped to duck in so rough and ready a way was decidedly an unpleasant episode in Mr. Effingham's Little-go Wine party.
To resent the insult was Mr. Bulpit's immediate resolve; and, to do so in the quickest way, he jumped upon his chair, and from thence on to the table, and was about to dash across it, regardless of plates and
