Shechem's _conversazione_." Of all nights in the
year, would she let us off duty on this one? "There are to be some very
pleasant people there," she says, "though none, perhaps, that _you
particularly care about_." (Thank you, my love; I understand that
good-natured allusion perfectly, and am proportionately grateful.) Her
voice sounds shriller than usual as she says this, and leaves us to put
some last touches to her toilette. So we order a fresh bottle,
notwithstanding the warning, and fall to thinking. How low and soft
_that other_ voice was, and, even when a little reproachful, how rarely
sweet! _She_ would scarcely have invented that last taunt if matters
had turned out differently. Then we think of our respected
father-in-law, Sir Joseph Leyburn, of Harran Park--a mighty county
magistrate and cattle-breeder. He got Ishmael Deadeye, the poacher,
transported last year, and took the prize for Devons at the Great
Mesopotamian Agricultural with a brindled bull. We remember his weeping
at the wedding-breakfast over the loss of his eldest treasure, and
wonder if he was an arrant humbug, or only a foolish, fond old man,
inclining morosely toward the former opinion. We don't seem to care much
about Sir Roland de Vaux, the celebrated geologist, whom we shall have
the privilege of meeting this evening. What are strata to us, when our
thoughts will not go lower than about _eight feet_ underground? We shall
be rather bored than otherwise by Dr. Sternhold, that eminent Christian
divine, who passes his leisure hours in proving St. Paul to have been an
unsound theologian and a weak dialectician. Why should Mr. Planet, the
intrepid traveler, be always inflicting Jerusalem upon us, as if no one
had ever visited the Holy Land before him? Our ancestors did so five
hundred years ago, and did not make half the fuss about it; and _they_
had a skirmish or two there worth speaking of, while we don't believe a
word of Planet's encounter with those three Arabs on the Hebron road.
Pooh! there's no more peril in traversing the Wilderness of Cades than
in going up to the Grands Mulets. We are not worthy of those
distinguished men, and would prefer the society of hard-riding Dick
Foley of the Blues. He had a few feelings in common with us once on a
certain point (how we hated him then), and he won't wonder if we are
duller than usual this evening. Perhaps his own nerve will scarcely be
as iron as usual in the Grand Military, to come off in the c