ndings, and perceiving no change in my countenance, continued: "It was
just to beg, that, in a kind and friendly way, you'd come over and eat your
dinner with us on Sunday; nobody but the family, not a soul--Mrs. Blake and
the girls; a boiled leg of mutton; Matthew; a fresh trout, if we can catch
one! Plain and homely, but a hearty welcome, and a bottle of old claret,
may be, too--ah! ah! ah!"

Before the cadence of Mr. Blake's laugh had died away, I politely but
resolutely declined the proffered invitation, and by way of setting the
question at rest forever, gave him to understand that, from impaired health
and other causes, I had resolved upon strictly confining myself to the
limits of my own house and grounds, at least for the present.

Mr. Blake then saluted me for the last time, and left the room. As he
mounted his hackney, I could not help overhearing an abortive effort he
made to draw Mike into something like conversation; but it proved an utter
failure, and it was evident he deemed the man as incorrigible as the
master.

"A very fine young man the captain is--remarkable!--and it's proud I am to
have him for a nephew!"

So saying, he cantered down the avenue, while Mickey, as he looked after
him, muttered between his teeth, "And faix, it's prouder you'd be av he was
your son-in-law!"

Mike's soliloquy seemed to show me, in a new light, the meaning of my
relative's manner. It was for the first time in my life that such a thought
had occurred to me, and it was not without a sense of shame that I now
admitted it.

If there be something which elevates and exalts us in our esteem, tinging
our hearts with heroism and our souls with pride, in the love and
attachment of some fair and beautiful girl, there is something equally
humiliating in being the object of cold and speculative calculation to a
match-making family: your character studied; your pursuits watched; your
tastes conned over; your very temperament inquired into; surrounded
by snares; environed by practised attentions; one eye fixed upon the
registered testament of your relative, the other riveted upon your own
caprices; and then those thousand little cares and kindnesses which come so
pleasurably upon the heart when the offspring of true affection, perverted
as they are by base views and sordid interest, are so many shocks to the
feeling and understanding. Like the Eastern sirocco, which seems to breathe
of freshness and of health, and yet bears but pe