The motion was unanimously approved of; this unanimity having been secured by the inability of several of the party, who had been rendered hors de combat, to express dissent.
A general break up, then, was the consequence of the doctor's motion. Candle in hand, Mr. Walkinshaw rose and accompanied his guests to the door, towards which they moved in a long irregular file, he leading the way. In the passage, however, a momentary halt was called. It was to allow the doctor to don himself in his walking gear. With some assistance from his host, this was soon accomplished. His hat was stuck on his head, his martial cloak thrown around him, and his immense comforter, like a red blanket, coiled around his neck. Thus accoutred, the doctor and his friends evacuated the premises of their worthy host, Mr. Walkinshaw.
THE RETURN HOME, AND INCIDENTS THEREFROM ARISING.
The doctor had not proceeded far on his way home, until he found himself alone. One after another, his friends had popped off; some disappearing mysteriously, others giving fair warning of their departure, by shaking him by the hand, and wishing him
----"good night,
And rosy dreams and slumbers light."
Left to his own reflections, and, we may add, to his own exertions, the doctor stumped bravely homeward, and, without meeting with anything particularly worthy of notice, arrived safely at his own close mouth.
In another part of this history, we have mentioned that there were one or two difficulties that always awaited the doctor on his return home when in the particular state in which he was at this moment. The first of these difficulties was to climb the dark tortuous staircase, on the third story of which was his domicile. The second was to discriminate between his neighbours' door and his own. The reader will recollect that, to obviate this last difficulty, the doctor fell upon the ingenious expedient of counting the landing-places as he ascended, his own being number three.
The reader's memory refreshed as to these particulars, we proceed to say that the doctor, having traversed the close with a tolerably firm and steady step, commenced his laborious ascent of the stair in his usual manner, but with evidently fully more difficulty, as some of the neighbours, who heard his struggles, remarked, than ordinary,—a circumstance from which they inferred—and correctly enough, as we have seen—that the doctor was more than ordinarily overcome.
The first flight of steps the doctor accomplished with perfect success, and with perfect accuracy recorded it as number one. This done, he commenced the ascent of number two; and, after a severe struggle, accomplished it also. But by the time he had done so, the doctor had lost his reckoning, and, believing that he had gained his own landing-place, from which, we need hardly remind the reader, he was yet an entire flight of stairs distant, he deliberately pulled out his check-key, and applied it to the door of the neighbour who lived right under him,—a certain Mr. Thomson, who pursued the intellectual calling of a cheesemonger.
Having inserted the key in the lock, the doctor gave it the necessary twitch; and, obedient to the hint, the bolt rose, the door opened, and the doctor walked in.