I need the idle words of a Warwickshire stroller, to teach me
my grateful duty to your ladyship on this occasion, which appoints me to
be directed by you in all things which my conscience will permit."

"Since you permit me such influence, then," replied the Lady Peveril,
"I shall be moderate in exercising it, in order that I may, in my
domination at least, give you a favourable impression of the new order
of things. So, if you will be a subject of mine for one day, neighbour,
I am going, at my lord and husband's command, to issue out my warrants
to invite the whole neighbourhood to a solemn feast at the Castle,
on Thursday next; and I not only pray you to be personally present
yourself, but to prevail on your worthy pastor, and such neighbours and
friends, high and low, as may think in your own way, to meet with the
rest of the neighbourhood, to rejoice on this joyful occasion of the
King's Restoration, and thereby to show that we are to be henceforward a
united people."

The parliamentarian Major was considerably embarrassed by this proposal.
He looked upward, and downward, and around, cast his eye first to the
oak-carved ceiling, and anon fixed it upon the floor; then threw
it around the room till it lighted on his child, the sight of whom
suggested another and a better train of reflections than ceiling and
floor had been able to supply.

"Madam," he said, "I have long been a stranger to festivity, perhaps
from constitutional melancholy, perhaps from the depression which is
natural to a desolate and deprived man, in whose ear mirth is marred,
like a pleasant air when performed on a mistuned instrument. But though
neither my thoughts nor temperament are Jovial or Mercurial, it becomes
me to be grateful to Heaven for the good He has sent me by the means of
your ladyship. David, the man after God's own heart, did wash and eat
bread when his beloved child was removed--mine is restored to me, and
shall I not show gratitude under a blessing, when he showed resignation
under an affliction? Madam, I will wait on your gracious invitation with
acceptance; and such of my friends with whom I may possess influence,
and whose presence your ladyship may desire, shall accompany me to the
festivity, that our Israel may be as one people."

Having spoken these words with an aspect which belonged more to a martyr
than to a guest bidden to a festival, and having kissed, and solemnly
blessed his little girl, Major Bridgenorth took his