rld made me love to listen to
stories of courts and courtiers, my uncle returned the compliment by
declaring of my wit, as the angler declared of the River Lea, that one
would find enough in it, if one would but angle sufficiently long.

Nor was this all; my uncle and myself were exceedingly like the waters
of Alpheus and Arethusa,--nothing was thrown into the one without being
seen very shortly afterwards floating upon the other. Every witticism or
legend Sir William imparted to me (and some, to say truth, were a little
tinged with the licentiousness of the times he had lived in), I took the
first opportunity of retailing, whatever might be the audience; and few
boys, at the age of thirteen, can boast of having so often as myself
excited the laughter of the men and the blushes of the women. This
circumstance, while it aggravated my own vanity, delighted my uncle's;
and as I was always getting into scrapes on his account, so he was
perpetually bound, by duty, to defend me from the charges of which he
was the cause. No man defends another long without loving him the better
for it; and perhaps Sir William Devereux and his eldest nephew were the
only allies in the world who had no jealousy of each other.

CHAPTER II.

A FAMILY CONSULTATION.--A PRIEST, AND AN ERA IN LIFE.

"YOU are ruining the children, my dear Sir William," said my gentle
mother, one day when I had been particularly witty; "and the Abbe
Montreuil declares it absolutely necessary that they should go to
school."

"To school!" said my uncle, who was caressing his right leg, as it lay
over his left knee,--"to school, Madam! you are joking. What for, pray?"

"Instruction, my dear Sir William," replied my mother.

"Ah, ah; I forgot that; true, true!" said my uncle, despondingly, and
there was a pause. My mother counted her rosary; my uncle sank into
a revery; my twin brother pinched my leg under the table, to which
I replied by a silent kick; and my youngest fixed his large, dark,
speaking eyes upon a picture of the Holy Family, which hung opposite to
him.

My uncle broke the silence; he did it with a start.

"Od's fish, Madam,"--(my uncle dressed his oaths, like himself, a little
after the example of Charles II.)--"od's fish, Madam, I have thought of
a better plan than that; they shall have instruction without going to
school for it."

"And how, Sir William?"

"I will instruct them myself, Madam," and William slapped the calf of
the leg he was