st of 'em--something queer about him--can't see
to the bottom of him--don't think he's quite so meek and lamb-like as
he seems:--once saw a calm dead pool in foren parts--peered down into
it--by little and little, my eye got used to it--saw something dark
at the bottom--stared and stared--by Jupiter--a great big
alligator!--walked off immediately--never liked quiet pools since--augh,
no!"

"An argument against quiet pools, perhaps, Bunting; but scarcely against
quiet people."

"Don't know as to that, your honour--much of a muchness. I have seen
Master Aram, demure as he looks, start, and bite his lip, and change
colour, and frown--he has an ugly frown, I can tell ye--when he thought
no one nigh. A man who gets in a passion with himself may be soon out
of temper with others. Free to confess, I should not like to see him
married to that stately beautiful young lady--but they do gossip about
it in the village. If it is not true, better put the Squire on his
guard--false rumours often beget truths--beg pardon, your honour--no
business of mine--baugh! But I'm a lone man, who have seen the world,
and I thinks on the things around me, and I turns over the quid--now on
this side, now on the other--'tis my way, Sir--and--but I offend your
honour."

"Not at all; I know you are an honest man, Bunting, and well affected
to our family; at the same time it is neither prudent nor charitable to
speak harshly of our neighbours without sufficient cause. And really you
seem to me to be a little hasty in your judgment of a man so inoffensive
in his habits and so justly and generally esteemed as Mr. Aram."

"May be, Sir--may be,--very right what you say. But I thinks what I
thinks all the same; and indeed, it is a thing that puzzles me, how that
strange-looking vagabond, as frighted the ladies so, and who, Miss Nelly
told me, for she saw them in his pocket, carried pistols about him,
as if he had been among cannibals and hottentots, instead of the
peaceablest county that man ever set foot in, should boast of his
friendship with this larned schollard, and pass a whole night in his
house. Birds of a feather flock together--augh!--Sir!"

"A man cannot surely be answerable for the respectability of all
his acquaintances, even though he feel obliged to offer them the
accommodation of a night's shelter."

"Baugh!" grunted the Corporal. "Seen the world, Sir--seen the
world--young gentlemen are always so good-natured; 'tis a pity, that the