nk to listen to it, but I could
not do so undetected, so I had to console myself by imagining all the
shrewd and disagreeable remarks she must have made. Morals has its
rhubarb as well as medicine, wholesome, doubtless, when down, but
marvellously nauseous and very hard to swallow, and I felt that the
young person was getting a full dose; indeed, I could catch two very
significant words, which came and came again in the allocution, and
the very utterance of which added to their sharpness,--"levity,"
"encouragement." There they were again!

"Lay it on, old lady," muttered I; "your precepts are sound; never was
there a case more meet for their application. Never mind a little pain,
either,--one must touch the quick to make the cautery effectual. She
will be all the better for the lesson, and she has well earned it!" Oh,
Potts! Potts! was this not very hard-hearted and ungenerous? Why should
the sorrow of that young creature have been a pleasure to you? Is it
possible that the mean sentiment of revenge has had any share in this?
Are you angry with her that she liked that man's conversation, and
turned to _him_ in preference to _you?_ You surely cannot be actuated by
a motive so base as this? Is it for herself, for her own advantage, her
preservation, that you are thinking all this time? Of course it is. And
there, now, I think I hear her sob. Yes, she is crying; the old lady has
really come to the quick, and I believe is not going to stop there.

"Well," thought I, "old ladies are an excellent invention; none of these
cutting severities could be done but for them. And they have a patient
persistence in this surgery quite wonderful, for when they have
flayed the patient all over, they sprinkle on salt as carefully as a
pastry-cook frosting a plum-cake."

At last, I did begin to wish it was over. She surely must have addressed
herself to every phase of the question in an hour and a half; and yet
I could hear her still grinding, grinding on, as though the efficacy
of her precepts, like a homoeopathic remedy, were to be increased by
trituration. Fortunately, we had to halt for fresh horses; and so I got
down to chat with them at the carriage-door, and interrupt the lecture.
Little was I prepared for the reddened eyes and quivering lips of that
poor girl, as she drank off the glass of water she begged me to fetch
her, but still less for the few words she contrived to whisper in my ear
as I took the glass from her hands.

"I