eating
herself at his side, "and to know that to-morrow is Sunday, and that we
have our holiday, each of us. Come, papa, confess this little room and
its bright fire are very cheery! And I have got a newspaper for you. I
told Mrs. Hawksey there was nothing such a treat to you as a newspaper,
and she gave me one."

"Ah! the 'Trumpet of Liberty,'" said he, opening it. "We'll have it
after tea, Bella. Is there anything about our own county in it,--Cork, I
mean?"

"I have not looked in it yet; but we 'll go through it honestly, papa,
for I know how conscientious you are not to lose a paragraph."

"'T is that same makes a man agreeable in society. You know everything
if you read the papers,--accidents and marriages, the rate of the
money-market, the state of the crops, who is dining with the Queen, and
who is skating on the Serpentine, who is ruined at Newmarket, and who
drowned at sea, and then all about the play-houses and the wonderful
panoramas; so that, let conversation turn how it will, you 're ready for
it, and that 's the reason, Bella, you must go through every bit of it.
It's like hunting, and the very field perhaps you don't try is just the
one you 'd find a fox in!"

"Well, you 'll see. I 'll beat every cover for you!" said she, laughing;
"and Mrs. Hawksey desires to have it back, for there is something about
the Alderman having said or done--I don't know what or where."

"How I hate the very name of an Alderman!" said Kellett, peevishly;
"regular vagabonds, with gilt coaches and red cloaks, running about
prating of taxes and the pipe-water! The devil a thing I feel harder to
bear in my poverty than to think you 're a visiting governess in an
Alderman's family. Paul Kellett's daughter a visiting governess!"

"And very proud am I to be thought equal to the charge," said she,
resolutely; "not to say how grateful to you for having enabled me to
undertake it."

"Myself in the Customs is nothing; that I'd put up with. Many a reduced
gentleman did the same. Sam Crozier was a marker at a billiard-table in
Tralee, and Ennis Magrath was an overseer on the very road he used
to drive his four-in-hand. 'Many a time,' says he, 'I cursed that
fresh-broken stone, but I never thought I 'd be measuring it!' 'T is the
Encumbered Court has brought us all down, Bella, and there's no disgrace
in being ruined with thousands of others. Just begin with the sales of
estates, and tell us who is next for sentence. God forgive me, b