ding on somebody's head, or his own head,--as his
convalescence advances, his breakages are fearful. Miss Honeyman and
Hannah will talk about his dilapidations for years after the little chap
has left them. When he is a jolly young officer in the Guards, and comes
to see them at Brighton, they will show him the blue-dragon Chayny jar,
on which he would sit, and which he cried so fearfully upon breaking.

When this little party has gone out smiling to take its walk on the
sea-shore, the Colonel sits down and resumes the interrupted dessert.
Miss Honeyman talks of the children and their mother, and the merits of
Mr. Kuhn, and the beauty of Miss Ethel, glancing significantly towards
Clive, who has had enough of gingerbread nuts and dessert and wine, and
whose youthful nose is by this time at the window. What kind-hearted
woman, young or old, does not love match-making?

The Colonel, without lifting his eyes from the table, says "she reminds
him of--of somebody he knew once."

"Indeed?" cries Miss Honeyman, and thinks Emma must have altered very
much after going to India, for she had fair hair, and white eyelashes,
and not a pretty foot certainly--but, my dear good lady, the Colonel is
not thinking of the late Mrs. Casey.

He has taken a fitting quantity of the Madeira, the artless greeting
of the people here, young and old, has warmed his heart, and he goes
upstairs to pay a visit to his sister-in-law, to whom he makes his most
courteous bow as becomes a lady of her rank. Ethel takes her place quite
naturally beside him during his visit. Where did he learn those fine
manners which all of us who knew him admired in him? He had a natural
simplicity, an habitual practice of kind and generous thoughts; a pure
mind, and therefore above hypocrisy and affectation--perhaps those
French people with whom he had been intimate in early life had imparted
to him some of the traditional graces of their vieille tour--certainly
his half-brothers had inherited none such. "What is this that Barnes has
written about his uncle, that the Colonel is ridiculous?" Lady Anne said
to her daughter that night. "Your uncle is adorable. I have never seen
a more perfect grand Seigneur. He puts me in mind of my grandfather,
though grandpapa's grand manner was more artificial, and his voice
spoiled by snuff. See the Colonel. He smokes round the garden, but with
what perfect grace! This is the man Uncle Hobson, and your poor dear
papa, have represented t