e
imitated by larger nations, our territory will remain small, and we shall
be a second-rate power; so I say that every man who reads and thinks
about his own c--country ought to be able to say, 'I have been
d--d--down a coal mine.'"

"Well," said the Colonel, loftily, "and can't you say you have been down
a coal mine? I could say that and sit here. Well, sir, you have been
reading the newspapers, and learning them off by heart as if they were
the Epistle and Gospel; of course _you_ must go down a coal mine; but if
you do, have a little mercy on the fair, and go down by yourself. In the
mean while, Walter, you can take your cousin and give her a walk in the
woods, and show her the primroses."

Now Julia was surprised and pleased at Percy's good sense, and she did
not care whether he got it from the newspapers or where he got it from;
it was there; so she resisted, and said, coldly and firmly, "Thank you,
uncle, but I don't want the primroses, and Walter does not want me. Come,
Percy _dear_;" and so she marched off; but she had not gone many steps
before, having a great respect for old age, she ordered Percy, in a
whisper, to make some apology to her uncle.

Percy did not much like the commission. However, he went back, and said,
very civilly, "This is a free country, but I am afraid I have been a
little too free in expressing my opinion; let me hope you are not
annoyed with me."

"I am never annoyed with a fool," said the implacable Colonel.

This was too much for any little man to stand.

"That is why you are always on such good terms with yourself," said
Percy, as red as a turkey-cock.

The Colonel literally stared with amazement. Hitherto it had been for him
to deliver bayonet thrusts, not to receive them.

Julia pounced on her bantam-cock, and with her left hand literally pulled
him off the premises, and shook her right fist at him till she got him
out of sight of the foe; then she kissed him on both cheeks, and burst
out laughing; and, indeed, she was so tickled that she kept laughing at
intervals, whether the immediate subject of the conversation was grave or
gay. It is hard not to laugh when a very little fellow cheeks a very big
one. Even Walter, though he admired as well as loved his father, hung his
head, and his shoulders shook with suppressed risibility. Colonel
Clifford detected him in this posture, and in his wrath gave his chair a
whack with his staff that brought Master Walter to the position of