A Little Dinner at Timmins's by William Makepeace Thackeray

The next persons whom little Mrs. Timmins was bent upon asking, were / Mr. and Mrs. John Rowdy, of the firm of Stumpy, Rowdy and Co., of / Brobdingnag Gardens, of the Prairie, Putney, and of Lombard Street, / City.

Mrs. Timinins and Mrs. Rowdy had been brought up at the same school / together, and there was always a little rivalry between them, from the / day when they contended for the French prize at school to last week, / when each had a stall at the Fancy Fair for the benefit of the Daughters / of Decayed Muffin-men; and when Mrs. Timmins danced against Mrs. Rowdy / in the Scythe Mazurka at the Polish Ball, headed by Mrs. Hugh Slasher. / Rowdy took twenty-three pounds more than Timmins in the Muffin / transaction (for she had possession of a kettle-holder worked by the / hands of R-y-lty, which brought crowds to her stall); but in the Mazurka / Rosa conquered: she has the prettiest little foot possible (which in / a red boot and silver heel looked so lovely that even the Chinese / ambassador remarked it), whereas Mrs. Rowdy's foot is no trifle, as Lord / Cornbury acknowledged when it came down on his lordship's boot-tip as / they danced together amongst the Scythes.

"These people are ruining themselves," said Mrs. John Rowdy to her / husband, on receiving the pink note. It was carried round by that rogue / of a buttony page in the evening; and he walked to Brobdingnag Gardens, / and in the Park afterwards, with a young lady who is kitchen-maid at 27, / and who is not more than fourteen years older than little Buttons.

"These people are ruining themselves," said Mrs. John to her husband. / "Rosa says she has asked the Bungays."

"Bungays indeed! Timmins was always a tuft-hunter," said Rowdy, who had / been at college with the barrister, and who, for his own part, has no / more objection to a lord than you or I have; and adding, "Hang him, what / business has HE to be giving parties? " allowed Mrs. Rowdy, nevertheless, / to accept Rosa's invitation.

"When I go to business to-morrow, I will just have a look at Mr. Fitz's / account," Mr. Rowdy thought; "and if it is overdrawn, as it usually is, / why. " The announcement of Mrs. Rowdy's brougham here put an end / to this agreeable train of thought; and the banker and his lady stepped / into it to join a snug little family-party of two-and-twenty, given by / Mr. and Mrs. Secondchop at their great house on the other side of the / Park.

"Rowdys 2, Bungays 3, ourselves and mamma 3, 2 Sawyers," calculated / little Rosa.

"General Gulpin," Rosa continued, "eats a great deal, and is very / stupid, but he looks well at table with his star and ribbon. Let us / put HIM down! " and she noted down "Sir Thomas and Lady Gulpin, 2. Lord / Castlemouldy, 1."

"You will make your party abominably genteel and stupid," groaned / Timmins. "Why don't you ask some of our old friends? Old Mrs. Portman / has asked us twenty times, I am sure, within the last two years."

"And the last time we went there, there was pea-soup for dinner! " Mrs. / Timmins said, with a look of ineffable scorn.

"Nobody can have been kinder than the Hodges have always been to us; and / some sort of return we might make, I think."

"Return, indeed! A pretty sound it is on the staircase to hear 'Mr. and / Mrs. 'Odge and Miss 'Odges' pronounced by Billiter, who always leaves / his h's out. No, no: see attorneys at your chambers, my dear -- but / what could the poor creatures do in OUR society? " And so, one by one, / Timmins's old friends were tried and eliminated by Mrs. Timmins, just as / if she had been an Irish Attorney-General, and they so many Catholics on / Mr. Mitchel's jury.

Mrs. Fitzroy insisted that the party should be of her very best company. / Funnyman, the great wit, was asked, because of his jokes; and Mrs. Butt, / on whom he practises; and Potter, who is asked because everybody else / asks him; and Mr. Ranville Ranville of the Foreign Office, who might / give some news of the Spanish squabble; and Botherby, who has suddenly / sprung up into note because he is intimate with the French Revolution, / and visits Ledru-Rollin and Lamartine. And these, with a couple more who / are amis de la maison, made up the twenty, whom Mrs. Timmins thought she / might safely invite to her little dinner.

But the deuce of it was, that when the answers to the invitations came / back, everybody accepted! Here was a pretty quandary. How they were to / get twenty into their dining-room was a calculation which poor Timmins / could not solve at all; and he paced up and down the little room in / dismay.

"Pooh! " said Rosa with a laugh. "Your sister Blanche looked very well in / one of my dresses last year; and you know how stout she is. We will find / some means to accommodate them all, depend upon it."

Mrs. John Rowdy's note to dear Rosa, accepting the latter's invitation, / was a very gracious and kind one; and Mrs. Fitz showed it to her husband / when he came back from chambers. But there was another note which had / arrived for him by this time from Mr. Rowdy -- or rather from the firm; / and to the effect that Mr. F. Timmins had overdrawn his account 28L. / 18s. 6d., and was requested to pay that sum to his obedient servants, / Stumpy, Rowdy and Co.

And Timmins did not like to tell his wife that the contending parties in / the Lough Foyle and Lough Corrib Railroad had come to a settlement, and / that the fifteen guineas a day had consequently determined. "I have had / seven days of it, though," he thought; "and that will be enough to / pay for the desk, the dinner, and the glasses, and make all right with / Stumpy and Rowdy."