her skull with
the pony. As for the housekeeper, she stuck to her text as stoutly
in the evening as she had stuck to it in the morning. "Pianner or no
pianner, story-book or no story-book, pony or no pony, you mark my
words, sir--that young woman will run away."

Such were the housekeeper's parting words when she wished me good-night.

When the next morning came, and brought with it that terrible waking
time which sets a man's hopes and projects before him, the great as well
as the small, stripped bare of every illusion, it is not to be concealed
that I felt less sanguine of our success in entertaining the coming
guest. So far as external preparations were concerned, there seemed,
indeed, but little to improve; but apart from these, what had we to
offer, in ourselves and our society, to attract her? There lay the
knotty point of the question, and there the grand difficulty of finding
an answer.

I fall into serious reflection while I am dressing on the pursuits and
occupations with which we three brothers have been accustomed, for years
past, to beguile the time. Are they at all likely, in the case of any
one of us, to interest or amuse her?

My chief occupation, to begin with the youngest, consists, in acting as
steward on Owen's property. The routine of my duties has never lost its
sober attraction to my tastes, for it has always employed me in watching
the best interests of my brother, and of my son also, who is one day
to be his heir. But can I expect our fair guest to sympathize with such
family concerns as these? Clearly not.

Morgan's pursuit comes next in order of review--a pursuit of a far more
ambitious nature than mine. It was always part of my second brother's
whimsical, self-contradictory character to view with the profoundest
contempt the learned profession by which he gained his livelihood, and
he is now occupying the long leisure hours of his old age in composing
a voluminous treatise, intended, one of these days, to eject the whole
body corporate of doctors from the position which they have usurped in
the estimation of their fellow-creatures. This daring work is entitled
"An Examination of the Claims of Medicine on the Gratitude of Mankind.
Decided in the Negative by a Retired Physician." So far as I can tell,
the book is likely to extend to the dimensions of an Encyclopedia; for
it is Morgan's plan to treat his comprehensive subject principally
from the historical point of view, and to run down al