he ladies
present. Ruffled brows were smoothed and sharp voices hushed at his
approach. He immediately and quietly assumed the man's place in the
room; attended to everyone's wants, lessened the pretty maidservant's
labour by waiting on empty cups and bread-and-butterless ladies; and yet
did it all in so easy and dignified a manner, and so much as if it were
a matter of course for the strong to attend to the weak, that he was a
true man throughout.

The party passed off very well in spite of one or two little hitches.
One was Miss Jessie Brown's unguarded admission--_a propos_ of Shetland
wool--that she had an uncle, her mother's brother, who was a shopkeeper
in Edinburgh. Miss Jenkyns tried to drown this confession by a terrible
cough, for the honourable Mrs. Jamieson was sitting at the card-table
nearest Miss Jessie, and what would she say or think if she found out
she was in the same room with a shopkeeper's niece!

Then there was a slight breeze between Miss Jenkyns and Captain Brown
over the relative merits of Dr. Johnson and the author of "Pickwick
Papers"--then being published in parts--as writers of light and
agreeable fiction. Captain Brown read an account of the "Swarry" which
Sam Weller gave at Bath. Some of us laughed very heartily. _I_ did not
dare, because I was staying in the house. At the conclusion Miss Jenkyns
said to me, with mild dignity, "Fetch me 'Rasselas,' my dear, out of the
book-room."

After delivering one of the conversations between Rasselas and Imlac in
a majestic, high-pitched voice, Miss Jenkyns said, "I imagine I am now
justified in my preference for Dr. Johnson over your Mr. Boz as a writer
of fiction."

The captain said nothing, merely screwed his lips up and drummed on the
table; but when Miss Jenkyns returned later to the charge and
recommended the doctor's style to Captain Brown's favourite, the captain
replied, "I should be very sorry for him to exchange his style for any
such pompous writing."

Miss Jenkyns felt this as a personal affront in a way of which the
captain had not dreamed. How could he know that she and her friends
looked upon epistolary writing as their forte, and that when in a letter
they "seized the half-hour just previous to post-time to assure" their
friends of this and that, they were using the doctor as a model?

As it was Miss Jenkyns refused to be mollified by Captain Brown's
efforts later to beguile her into conversation on some more pleasing
subject