servant nine years
without learning the ways of gentry, and being able to know gentry when I
see them.'

'And what do you say to all this?' I demanded of Belle.

'Stop a moment,' interposed the postilion, 'I have one more word to
say:--and when you are surrounded by your comforts, keeping your nice
little barouche and pair, your coachman and livery servant, and visited
by all the carriage people in the neighbourhood--to say nothing of the
time when you come to the family estates on the death of the old people--I
shouldn't wonder if now and then you look back with longing and regret to
the days when you lived in the damp dripping dingle, had no better
equipage than a pony or donkey cart, and saw no better company than a
tramper or gypsy, except once, when a poor postilion was glad to seat
himself at your charcoal fire.'

'Pray,' said I, 'did you ever take lessons in elocution?'

'Not directly,' said the postilion; 'but my old master, who was in
Parliament, did, and so did his son, who was intended to be an orator. A
great professor used to come and give them lessons, and I used to stand
and listen, by which means I picked up a considerable quantity of what is
called rhetoric. In what I last said, I was aiming at what I have heard
him frequently endeavouring to teach my governors as a thing
indispensably necessary in all oratory, a graceful
pere--pere--peregrination.'

'Peroration, perhaps?'

'Just so,' said the postilion; 'and now I'm sure I am not mistaken about
you; you have taken lessons yourself, at first hand, in the college
vacations, and a promising pupil you were, I make no doubt. Well, your
friends will be all the happier to get you back. Has your governor much
borough interest?'

'I ask you once more,' said I, addressing myself to Belle, 'what you
think of the history which this good man has made for us?'

'What should I think of it,' said Belle, still keeping her face buried in
her hands, 'but that it is mere nonsense?'

'Nonsense!' said the postilion.

'Yes,' said the girl, 'and you know it.'

'May my leg always ache, if I do,' said the postilion, patting his leg
with his hand; 'will you persuade me that this young man has never been
at college?'

'I have never been at college, but--'

'Ay, ay,' said the postilion, 'but--'

'I have been to the best schools in Britain, to say nothing of a
celebrated one in Ireland.'

'Well, then, it comes to the same thing,' said the postilion, 'or per