Mrs. Powler is in the place of honour opposite the window. A little woman, with a dark-skinned deeply-lined face, and small sparkling black eyes, the fire in which remains undimmed by the seventy years through which they have looked upon the world, though their sight is somewhat failing. She wears a fierce black front, and a closely-fitting white lace cap over it, and an open raspberry-tart-like miniature of her deceased lord--a rather black and steelly-looking daguerreotype--gleams on her chest. Mrs. Powler likes her drinks, as she does not scruple to confess, and has been sipping from a small silver tankard of cider.
"Who was that just went passt the windor, Jupp?" she said, after a short period of tankard abstraction. "My eyes isn't what they was, and I du 'low I couldn't see, though I'm settin' right oppo-site like."
"Heart alive!" struck in Mrs. Jupp, after a moment's silence, and seeing it was perfectly impossible her better-half could sufficiently masticate the piece of cold beef on which he was engaged in anything like time for a reply--"heart alive! to hear you talk of your eyes, Mrs. Powler! Why, there's many a young gal would give anythin' for such a pair in her head, either for show or for use, either!"
"I should think so," said Mr. Jupp, who had by this time cleared his mouth and moistened his palate with the contents of the cider-tankard--"I should think so!" and Mr. Jupp, who was of a convivial turn, began to troll, "Eyes black--as sloes, and--bo-o-oo-som rounded----"
"Mr. Jupp," interrupted Mrs. Jupp, a tall, thin, horse-faced woman, with projecting buck-teeth, and three little sausage curls of iron-gray hair flattened down on either side her forehead, "reck'lect where you are, if you please, and keep your ditties to yourself."
"Well, niver mind my eyes," said Mrs. Powler; she desired to make peace, but she was a rich woman and in her own house, and consequently spoke in a dictatorial way--"niver mind my eyes, nor anything else for the matter of that, but tell who it was that went passt."
"It was the Captain, my dear madam, the Captain," replied Mr. Jupp, freshly attacking the cold beef, and consoling himself for his snubbing with his supper. "You had no great loss in not seeing him, ma'am: it was only the Captain."
"What! Prinsy, Drinsy, what's his name?" said Mr. Hallibut, taking a clean plate, and delicately clearing his lips and fingers from lobster remains on the corner of the tablecloth. "I'll trouble you, Jupp!--Is he still here?"
"His name's Derinzy, Mr. Hollybut," said Mrs. Jupp--"De-rin-zy; it's a French name." Mrs. Jupp had been a lady's-maid once on a time, and prided herself on her manners and education.
"And mine's Hallibut, and not Hollybut, Mrs. Jupp," said the fish-factor jocosely; "and I'll trouble J-u double p--which I take it is an English name--for some of the inside fat--next the marrer-bone there!"