to one you would have thought
them beautiful too. The other pair seemed equally happy.

"So you don't like me the worse," said Mr Sidsby, "now that you know I
am not a poet?"

"I don't know how it is, but I don't think I care for poetry now at
all," replied the lady. "In fact, I suppose my passion for it was
never real, and I only fancied I was enchanted with it from hearing
papa and Mr Bristles perpetually raving about strength and genius. Is
Miss Hendy a really clever woman?"

"A genuine humbug, I should say--gooseberry champagne at two shillings
a bottle," was the somewhat professional verdict on Miss Hendy's
claims.

"Oh! you shouldn't talk that way of Miss Hendy--who knows but she may
be my mamma soon?"

"He can never be such a confounded jackass!" said Mr Sidsby, without
giving a local habitation or a name to the personal pronoun _he_.

"He loses his daughters, I can tell him," said Miss Sophy with a toss
of her head, that set all the flowers on the top of her bonnet
shaking--"Emily and I are quite resolved on that."

"But what can you do?" enquired the gentleman, who did not appear to
be very nearly akin to Oedipus.

"Do? Why, don't we get possession of mamma's fortune if he marries;
and can't we--oh, you've squeezed my ring into my finger!"

"My dear Sophy, I was only trying to show you how much I admired your
spirit. I hope he'll marry Miss Hendy with all my heart."

When a conversation has got to this point, a chronicle of any
pretensions to respectability will maintain a rigid silence; and we
will therefore only observe, that by the time Mr William Whalley and
Emily had come to Marlborough House, their conversation had arrived at
a point where discretion becomes as indispensably a chronicler's duty
as in the case of the other couple.

"We must get home," said Sophy.

"Why should you go yet? There is no chance of your father being back
from the city for hours to come."

"Oh! but we must get home. We have been out a long time." And so
saying, she led the way up the steps by the Duke of York's column,
followed by her sister and her swain--and attended at a respectful
distance by a tall gentleman with an immense gold-headed
walking-stick, displaying nether integuments of the brightest red, and
white silk stockings of unexampled purity. The reader, if he had heard
the various whispered allusions to different dishes, such as "sheep's
head," "calf's foot jelly," "rhubarb tart," and "toasted cheese,"