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"Susan," she called out, "will you please help me to put on my after-dinner frock?" "You have only a white dress to wear this evening, miss; your new black one has not come home yet." "A white one will be all right," replied Iris. "Oh, dear me, miss! and your poor mother only a week dead." "I wish, Susan, you would not talk of mother as dead," answered Iris. "I don't think of her like that a bit.
All the extravagant anecdotes of morbid self-love, miserly epicurism, strained courtesy, and frivolous absurdity current used to boast a Frenchman as their hero. It was so in novels, plays, and after-dinner stories.
Among tellers of Irish stories, Lord Morris is supreme; one of his best depicts two Irish officials of the good old times discussing, in all the confidence of their after-dinner claret, the principles on which they bestowed their patronage Said the first, "Well, I don't mind admitting that, caeteris paribus, I prefer my own relations."
He had looked forward to an autumn at Fairoaks; and perhaps the idea of passing two or three months there did not amuse the young man. "There is not a soul to speak to in the place," he said to Warrington. "I can't stand old Portman's sermons, and pompous after-dinner conversation. I know all old Glanders's stories about the Peninsular war.
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch had been enjoying an after-dinner nap on the couch in his study when Alexey Yegorytch had announced the unexpected visitor. Hearing the name, he had positively leapt up, unwilling to believe it. But soon a smile gleamed on his lips a smile of haughty triumph and at the same time of a blank, incredulous wonder.
They got me to make 'em after-dinner speeches an' do fancy stunts with my raw-hide ropin' wine bottles off the waiters' trays an' such until we got as friendly as a herd of tramps.
"Smoking my after-dinner cigar in the narrow pathways and miniature shrubberies of my mother's garden, I could venture to think of my lost Margaret; and I did think of her, and pray for her with as fervent aspirations as ever rose from a man's faithful heart.
Other speeches were made; but from beginning to end there was not one breath of eloquence, nor even one neat sentence; and I rather think that Englishmen would purposely avoid eloquence or neatness in after-dinner speeches. It seems to be no part of their object.
"Well, for my part," said Clara, "I wish we were interesting enough to be written or painted about." Dick answered her with some lover's speech, impossible to be written down, and then we sat quiet a little. Dick broke the silence at last, saying: "Guest, forgive us for a little after-dinner dulness. What would you like to do?
Since he neither played cards, danced, nor drank in after-dinner symposiums, this spirited amusement stirred his blood. Pani went to bed early, and Margot would bring in her sewing and see that nothing untoward happened. Few of the stores were open in the evenings. Short as the day was, all the business could be done in it.
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