And as there was to be rather a good dinner that day, she invited Mr.Smirke to partake of it; and we may be sure that he was too happy to accept such a delightful summons.
Eased, by the above report, of all her former doubts and misgivings regarding the Curate, Helen was exceedingly kind and gracious to Mr.
Smirke during dinner, redoubling her attentions, perhaps, because Major Pendennis was very high and reserved with his nephew's tutor.

When Pendennis asked Smirke to drink wine, he addressed him as if he was a Sovereign speaking to a petty retainer, in a manner so condescending, that even Pen laughed at it, although quite ready, for his part, to be as conceited as most young men are.
But Smirke did not care for the impertinences of the Major so long as he had his hostess's kind behaviour; and he passed a delightful time by her side at table, exerting all his powers of conversation to please her, talking in a manner both clerical and worldly, about the Fancy Bazaar, and the Great Missionary Meeting, about the last new novel, and the Bishop's excellent sermon about the fashionable parties in London, an account of which he read in the newspapers--in fine, he neglected no art, by which a College divine who has both sprightly and serious talents, a taste for the genteel, an irreproachable conduct, and a susceptible heart, will try and make himself agreeable to the person on whom he has fixed his affections.
Major Pendennis came yawning out of the dining-room very soon after his sister and little Laura had left the apartment.

"What an unsufferable bore that man is, and how he did talk!" the Major said.
"He has been very good to Arthur, who is very fond of him," Mrs.
Pendennis said,--"I wonder who the Miss Thompson is whom he is going to marry ?" "I always thought the fellow was looking in another direction," said the Major.
"And in what ?" asked Mrs.Pendennis quite innocently,--"towards Myra Portman ?" "Towards Helen Pendennis, if you must know," answered her brother-in-law.
"Towards me! impossible!" Helen said, who knew perfectly well that such had been the case.

"His marriage will be a very happy thing.

I hope Arthur will not take too much wine." Now Arthur, flushed with a good deal of pride at the privilege of having the keys of the cellar, and remembering that a very few more dinners would probably take place which he and his dear friend Smirke could share, had brought up a liberal supply of claret for the company's drinking, and when the elders with little Laura left him, he and the Curate began to pass the wine very freely.
One bottle speedily yielded up the ghost, another shed more than half its blood, before the two topers had been much more than half an hour together--Pen, with a hollow laugh and voice, had drunk off one bumper to the falsehood of women, and had said sardonically, that wine at any rate was a mistress who never deceived, and was sure to give a man a welcome.
Smirke gently said that he knew for his part some women who were all truth and tenderness; and casting up his eyes towards the ceiling, and heaving a sigh as if evoking some being dear and unmentionable, he took up his glass and drained it, and the rosy liquor began to suffuse his face.
Pen trolled over some verses he had been making that morning, in which he informed himself that the woman who had slighted his passion could not be worthy to win it: that he was awaking from love's mad fever, and, of course, under these circumstances, proceeded to leave her, and to quit a heartless deceiver: that a name which had one day been famous in the land, might again be heard in it: and, that though he never should be the happy and careless boy he was but a few months since, or his heart be what it had been ere passion had filled it and grief had well-nigh killed it; that though to him personally death was as welcome as life, and that he would not hesitate to part with the latter, but for the love of one kind being whose happiness depended on his own,--yet he hoped to show he was a man worthy of his race, and that one day the false one should be brought to know how great was the treasure and noble the heart which she had flung away.
Pen, we say, who was a very excitable person, rolled out these verses in his rich sweet voice, which trembled with emotion whilst our young poet spoke.