compelled the acceptance of the challenge, even with a
trembling forecast of the taste of dust.

"Never mind," said Dr. Upround, as he rose and stretched himself, a good
straight man of threescore years, with silver hair that shone like
silk; "it has not come to me yet; but it must, with a little
more perseverance. At Cambridge I beat everybody; and who is this
uncircumcised--at least, I beg his pardon, for I did myself baptize
him--but who is Robin Lyth, to mate his pastor and his master? All these
gambits are like a night attack. If once met properly and expelled,
you are in the very heart of the enemy's camp. He has left his own
watch-fires to rush at yours. The next game I play, I shall be sure to
beat him."

Fully convinced of this great truth, he took a strong oak staff and
hastened to obey his daughter. Miss Janetta Upround had not only learned
by nature, but also had been carefully taught by her parents, and by
every one, how to get her own way always, and to be thanked for taking
it. But she had such a happy nature, full of kindness and good-will,
that other people's wishes always seemed to flow into her own, instead
of being swept aside. Over her father her government was in no sort
constitutional, nor even a quiet despotism sweetened with liberal
illusions, but as pure a piece of autocracy as the Continent could
itself contain, in the time of this first Napoleon.

"Papa, what a time you have been, to be sure!" she exclaimed, as the
doctor came gradually up, probing his way in perfect leisure, and
fragrant still of that gambit; "one would think that your parish was
on dry land altogether, while the better half of it, as they call
themselves--though the women are in righteousness the better half a
hundredfold--"

"My dear, do try to talk with some little sense of arithmetic, if no
other. A hundredfold the half would be the unit multiplied by fifty. Not
to mention that there can be no better half--"

"Yes, there can, papa, ever so many; and you may see one in mamma every
day. Now you put one eye to this glass, and the half is better than the
whole. With both, you see nothing; with one, you see better, fifty times
better, than with both before. Don't talk of arithmetic after that. It
is algebra now, and quod demonstrandum."

"To reason with the less worthy gender is degeneration of reason. What
would they have said in the Senate-house, Janetta? However, I will obey
your orders. What am I to look at?"

"