Mr. and Mrs. Podsnap are of the company, and the Fathers descry in Mrs. Podsnap a fine woman. She is consigned to a Father⁠—Boots’s Father, who employs five hundred thousand men⁠—and is brought to anchor on Veneering’s left; thus affording opportunity to the sportive Tippins on his right (he, as usual, being mere vacant space), to entreat to be told something about those loves of navvies, and whether they really do live on raw beefsteaks, and drink porter out of their barrows. But, in spite of such little skirmishes it is felt that this was to be a wondering dinner, and that the wondering must not be neglected. Accordingly, Brewer, as the man who has the greatest reputation to sustain, becomes the interpreter of the general instinct.

“I took,” says Brewer in a favourable pause, “a cab this morning, and I rattled off to that sale.”

Boots (devoured by envy) says, “So did I.”