from the spout,
"One can't wonder why every small man thinks it so pleasant to let down
a big one, when a father asks a stranger to let down his own son for
even fancying that he is not small beer. It is upon that principle in
human nature that criticism wisely relinquishes its pretensions as an
analytical science, and becomes a lucrative profession. It relies on the
pleasure its readers find in letting a man down."

CHAPTER IX.

IT was a pretty, quaint farmhouse, such as might well go with two or
three hundred acres of tolerably good land, tolerably well farmed by an
active old-fashioned tenant, who, though he did not use mowing-machines
nor steam-ploughs nor dabble in chemical experiments, still brought
an adequate capital to his land and made the capital yield a very fair
return of interest. The supper was laid out in a good-sized though
low-pitched parlour with a glazed door, now wide open, as were all the
latticed windows, looking into a small garden, rich in those straggling
old English flowers which are nowadays banished from gardens more
pretentious and; infinitely less fragrant. At one corner was an arbour
covered with honeysuckle, and opposite to it a row of beehives. The room
itself had an air of comfort, and that sort of elegance which indicates
the presiding genius of feminine taste. There were shelves suspended
to the wall by blue ribbons, and filled with small books neatly bound;
there were flower-pots in all the window-sills; there was a small
cottage piano; the walls were graced partly with engraved portraits of
county magnates and prize oxen; partly with samplers in worsted-work,
comprising verses of moral character and the names and birthdays of
the farmer's grandmother, mother, wife, and daughters. Over the
chimney-piece was a small mirror, and above that the trophy of a fox's
brush; while niched into an angle in the room was a glazed cupboard,
rich with specimens of old china, Indian and English.

The party consisted of the farmer, his wife, three buxom daughters, and
a pale-faced slender lad of about twenty, the only son, who did not take
willingly to farming: he had been educated at a superior grammar school,
and had high notions about the March of Intellect and the Progress of
the Age.

Kenelm, though among the gravest of mortals, was one of the least shy.
In fact shyness is the usual symptom of a keen _amour propre_; and of
that quality the youthful Chillingly scarcely possessed more tha