nd arabesques necessary to the occasion
running.'

She gazed at Patrick as if to intimate that he might be enlisted, and
said: 'It will be to Caroline. She will break it to her uncle.'

'Right, madam, on the part of a lady I 've never known to be wrong! And
so, my dear, I must take leave of you, to hurry down to the tormented
intestines of that poor racked city, where the winds of panic are
violently engaged in occupying the vacuum created by knocking over what
the disaster left standing; and it 'll much resemble a colliery accident
there, I suspect, and a rescue of dead bodies. Adieu, my dear.' He
pressed his lips on her thin fingers.

Patrick placed himself at Mrs. Adister's disposal as her secretary. She
nodded a gracious acceptance of him.

'I recommended the telegraph because it's my wife's own style, and comes
better from wires,' said the captain, as they were putting on their
overcoats in the hall. 'You must know the family. "Deeds not words"
would serve for their motto. She hates writing, and doesn't much love
talking. Pat 'll lengthen her sentences for her. She's fond of Adiante,
and she sympathises with her brother Edward made a grandfather through
the instrumentality of that foreign hooknose; and Patrick must turn the
two dagger sentiments to a sort of love-knot and there's the task he'll
have to work out in his letter to Miss Caroline. It's fun about Colonel
Arthur not going. He's to meet the burning Miss Mattock, who has gold
on her crown and a lot on her treasury, Phil, my boy! but I'm bound in
honour not to propose it. And a nice girl, a prize; afresh healthy girl;
and brains: the very girl! But she's jotted down for the Adisters, if
Colonel Arthur can look lower than his nose and wag his tongue a bit.
She's one to be a mother of stout ones that won't run up big doctors'
bills or ask assistance in growing. Her name's plain Jane, and she 's a
girl to breed conquerors; and the same you may say of her brother John,
who 's a mighty fit man, good at most things, though he counts his
fortune in millions, which I've heard is lighter for a beggar to perform
than in pounds, but he can count seven, and beat any of us easy by
showing them millions! We might do something for them at home with
a million or two, Phil. It all came from the wedding of a railway
contractor, who sprang from the wedding of a spade and a clod--and
probably called himself Mattock at his birth, no shame to him.'

'You're for the city,' sa