he had graciously promised
their proprietors to crop that evening. Nor, albeit few charges could
be more obnoxious than that of deputy-governor or charge-d'affaires
extraordinaires to the parish stocks, nor one more likely to render
Lenny Fairfield odious to his contemporaries, ought he to have been
insensible to the signal advantage of his condition over that of the two
sufferers, against whose ears and tails Mr. Stirn had no special motives
of resentment. To every bad there is a worse; and fortunately for
little boys, and even for grown men, whom the Stirns of the world regard
malignly, the majesty and law protect their ears, and the merciful
forethought of nature deprived their remote ancestors of the privilege
of entailing tails upon them. Had it been otherwise--considering what
handles tails would have given to the oppressor, how many traps envy
would have laid for them, how often they must have been scratched and
mutilated by the briars of life, how many good excuses would have been
found for lopping, docking, and trimming them--I fear that only the
lap-dogs of Fortune would have gone to the grave tail-whole.

CHAPTER XII.

The card-table was set out in the drawing-room at Hazeldean Hall; though
the little party were still lingering in the deep recess of the large
bay window, which (in itself of dimensions that would have swallowed up
a moderate-sized London parlour) held the great round tea-table, with
all appliances and means to boot,--for the beautiful summer moon shed on
the sward so silvery a lustre, and the trees cast so quiet a shadow,
and the flowers and new-mown hay sent up so grateful a perfume, that
to close the windows, draw the curtains, and call for other lights than
those of heaven would have been an abuse of the prose of life which even
Captain Barnabas, who regarded whist as the business of town and the
holiday of the country, shrank from suggesting. Without, the scene,
beheld by the clear moonlight, had the beauty peculiar to the
garden-ground round those old-fashioned country residences which, though
a little modernized, still preserve their original character,--the
velvet lawn, studded with large plots of flowers, shaded and scented,
here to the left by lilacs, laburnums, and rich syringas; there, to the
right, giving glimpses, over low clipped yews, of a green bowling-alley,
with the white columns of a summer-house built after the Dutch taste,
in the reign of William III.; and in front