I wouldn't have missed Dot, doing the honours in her wedding-gown,
my benison on her bright face! for any money. No! nor the good
Carrier, so jovial and so ruddy, at the bottom of the table. Nor
the brown, fresh sailor-fellow, and his handsome wife. Nor any one
among them. To have missed the dinner would have been to miss as
jolly and as stout a meal as man need eat; and to have missed the
overflowing cups in which they drank The Wedding-Day, would have
been the greatest miss of all.

After dinner, Caleb sang the song about the Sparkling Bowl. As I'm
a living man, hoping to keep so, for a year or two, he sang it
through.

And, by-the-by, a most unlooked-for incident occurred, just as he
finished the last verse.

There was a tap at the door; and a man came staggering in, without
saying with your leave, or by your leave, with something heavy on
his head. Setting this down in the middle of the table,
symmetrically in the centre of the nuts and apples, he said:

'Mr. Tackleton's compliments, and as he hasn't got no use for the
cake himself, p'raps you'll eat it.'

And with those words, he walked off.

There was some surprise among the company, as you may imagine.
Mrs. Fielding, being a lady of infinite discernment, suggested that
the cake was poisoned, and related a narrative of a cake, which,