d, "Well, that is something," and stopped. "Married in a month!" she
exclaimed. "And you don't know which one?"

"No," returned Gainsford; "master said 'one of you' as they was at
dinner, just as I come into the room. He was in jolly spirits, and kept
going so: 'What's a month! champagne, Gainsford,' and you should have
sees Mrs.--not Stump, but Chump. She'll be tipsy to-night, and I shall
bust if I have to carry of her upstairs. Well, she is fun!--she don't
mind handin' you a five-shilling piece when she's done tender: but I have
nearly lost my place two or three time along of that woman. She'd split
logs with laughing:--no need of beetle and wedges! 'Och!' she sings out,
'by the piper!'--and Miss Cornelia sitting there--and, 'Arrah!'--bother
the woman's Irish," (thus Gainsford gave up the effort at imitation, with
a spirited Briton's mild contempt for what he could not do) "she pointed
out Miss Cornelia and said she was like the tinker's dog:--there's the
bone he wants himself, and the bone he don't want anybody else to have.
Aha! ain't it good?"

"Oh! the tinker's dog! won't I remember that!" said the damsel, "she
can't be such a fool."

"Well, I don't know," Gainsford meditated critically. "She is; and yet
she ain't, if you understand me. What I feel about her is--hang it! she
makes ye laugh."

Sir Purcell moved from the shadow of the tree as noiselessly as he could,
so that this enamoured couple might not be disturbed. He had already
heard more than he quite excused himself for hearing in such a manner,
and having decided not to arrest the man and make him relate exactly what
Mr. Pole had spoken that evening at the Brookfield dinner-table, he
hurried on his return to town.

It was not till he had sight of his poor home; the solitary company of
chairs; the sofa looking bony and comfortless as an old female house
drudge; the table with his desk on it; and, through folding-doors, his
cold and narrow bed; not till then did the fact of his great loss stand
before him, and accuse him of living. He seated himself methodically and
wrote to Cornelia. His fancy pictured her now as sharp to every turn of
language and fall of periods: and to satisfy his imagined, rigorous
critic, he wrote much in the style of a newspaper leading article. No one
would have thought that tragic meaning underlay those choice and sounding
phrases. On reperusing the composition, he rejected it, but only to
produce one of a similar cast. He coul