y it must be somewhere near the river."

"You do? I tell you what it is, my boy," exclaimed Sir Norman, suddenly
and in an elevated key, "the best thing you can do is, to go home and
go to bed, and never mind young ladies. You'll catch the plague before
you'll catch this particular young lady--I can tell you that!"

"Monsieur is excited," lisped the lad raising his hat and running his
taper fingers through his glossy, dark curls. "Is she as handsome as
they say she is, I wonder?"

"Handsome!" cried Sir Norman, lighting up with quite a new sensation at
the recollection. "I tell you handsome doesn't begin to describe her!
She is beautiful, lovely, angelic, divine--" Here Sir Norman's litany of
adjectives beginning to give out, he came to a sudden halt, with a face
as radiant as the sky at sunrise.

"Ah! I did not believe them, when they told me she was so much like
me; but if she is as near perfection as you describe, I shall begin to
credit it. Strange, is it not, that nature should make a duplicate of
her greatest earthly chef d'oeuvre?"

"You conceited young jackanapes!" growled Sir Norman, in deep
displeasure. "It is far stranger how such a bundle of vanity can
contrive to live in this work-a-day world. You are a foreigner, I
perceive?"

"Yes, Sir Norman, I am happy to say I am."

"You don't like England, then?"

"I'd be sorry to like it; a dirty, beggarly, sickly place as I ever
saw!"

Sir Norman eyed the slender specimen of foreign manhood, uttering this
sentiment in the sincerest of tones, and let his hand fall heavily on
his shoulder.

"My good youth, be careful! I happen to be a native, and not altogether
used to this sort of talk. How long have you been here? Not long, I know
myself--at least, not in the Earl of Rochester's service, or I would
have seen you."

"Right! I have not been here a month; but that month has seemed longer
than a year elsewhere. Do you know, I imagine when the world was
created, this island of yours must have been made late on Saturday
night, and then merely thrown in from the refuse to fill up a dent in
the ocean."

Sir Norman paused in his walk, and contemplated the speaker a moment in
severest silence. But Master Hubert only lifted up his saucy face and
laughing black eyes, in dauntless sang froid.

"Master Hubert," began Master Hubert's companion, in his deepest and
sternest bass, "I don't know your other name, and it would be of no
consequence if I did--just listen