like."

"Delighted," replied the Squire, looking ruefully around him as if he
meditated instant flight--"delighted, I'm sure; but they haven't
flowered well this year. I'll teach you how to bud them if you like;
but you're aware, Miss Horsingham, that they've no smell."

John could stand it no longer, and was forced to bolt out of the room.
My aunt too rose from the table with something approaching a smile;
and the Squire, screwing his courage to the sticking-place, was
following her into the drawing-room, evidently for a private
interview, when Cousin Amelia, who seemed to have made up her mind to
take bodily possession of him, hurried the visitor off to the
billiard-room, there to engage in a match which would probably last
till luncheon-time. I never saw anything so hopeless as the expression
of the victim's countenance whilst suffering himself to be thus led
into captivity. He did summon courage to entreat "Miss Coventry to
come and mark"--a favour which, notwithstanding my cousin's black
looks, I really had not the heart to refuse him.

Game after game they played, the gentleman apparently abandoning
himself to his fate. Sprawling over the table, making the most
ridiculous blunders in counting, missing the most palpable of cannons,
and failing to effect the easiest of hazards; the lady brandishing her
mace in the most becoming attitudes, drooping her long hair over the
cushions, and displaying the whiteness of her hand and slender
symmetry of her fingers, as she requested her astonished adversary to
teach her "how to make a bridge," or "pocket the red," or "screw it
off the white," and lisped out "how hard it was to be disappointed by
that provoking kiss!" The Squire made one or two futile attempts to
engage me in a game, but Cousin Amelia was determined to have him all
to herself; and as it was getting near the time at which I take Aunt
Deborah her broth--for poor Aunt Deborah, I am sorry to say, is very
ill in bed--I made my escape, and as I ran upstairs heard the
billiard-room bell ring, and Squire Haycock summon up courage to "know
if Lady Horsingham was at leisure, as he wished to see her for five
minutes alone in the drawing-room."

People may say what they like about superstition and credulity and old
women's tales, but I _have_ faith in presentiments. Didn't I get up
from my work and walk to the window at least a dozen times to watch
for Cousin John coming home that wet day two years ago when he broke