eeling making men
wondrous kind. Gerald only laughed, and said he was glad my uncle
had such a good opinion of him, and that he should have liked to
have been there, to lend a hand in the fight; and then uncle said
something disagreeable, and we came away.

"But I feel almost sure that Uncle John is not really so angry as
he seems; and I believe that, if Gerald and I had taken the other
side, and had said that your conduct had been very wicked, he would
have defended you. It was stupid of us not to think of it, for you
know uncle always likes to disagree with other people--there is
nothing he hates more than their agreeing with him. His bark is
much worse than his bite, and you must not forget how good and kind
he has been to us all.

"You know how angry he was with my marriage, and he said I had
better have drowned myself, than have married a soldier; and I had
better have hung myself, than have married an Irishman--specially
when he had intended, all along, that I should marry the son of an
old friend of his, a most excellent and well-conducted young man,
with admirable prospects. But he came round in a month or two, and
the first notice of it was a letter from his lawyer, saying that,
in accordance with the instruction of his client, Mr. John Bale, he
had drawn up and now enclosed a post-nuptial settlement, settling
on me the sum of 5000 pounds consols; and that his client wished
him to say that, had I married the person he had intended for me,
that sum would have been doubled.

"The idea, when I never even saw the man! And when I wrote,
thanking him, he made no allusion to what he had said before; but
wrote that he should be glad, at all times, to see my husband and
myself, whenever we came to town; but that, as I knew, his hours
were regular, and the door always locked at ten o'clock--just as if
Gerald was in the habit of coming in, drunk, in the middle of the
night! Fortunately nothing puts Gerald out, and he screamed over
it; and we went and stopped a week with uncle, a month afterwards,
and he and Gerald got on capitally together, considering. Gerald
said it was like a bear and a monkey in one cage, but it was really
very funny.

"So I have no doubt he will come round, with you. Do try and not
vex him more than you can help, Bob. You know how much we all owe
him."

This was true. Bob's father had died when he was only three years
old--he being a lawyer, with a good business, at Plymouth--but he
had made