Scrymgeour was out at the time; but we left it at the side of his fireplace as a pleasant surprise.

Next morning, to my indignation, it was back at the side of my fireplace, and in the evening Scrymgeour came and upbraided me for trying, as he most unworthily expressed it, "to palm the thing off on him." He was no sooner gone than I took the table to pieces to send it to my brother.

I tied the stalk up in brown paper, meaning to get a box for the other parts.

William John sent off the stalk, and for some days the other pieces littered the floor.

My brother wrote me saying he had received something from me, for which his best thanks; but would I tell him what it was, as it puzzled everybody?
This was his impatient way; but I made an effort, and sent off the other pieces to him in a hat-box.
That was a year ago, and since then I have only heard the history of the smoking-table in fragments.