e upstart minx describe the reverend Mrs. Margaret
Dods) "at the Cleikum of Aultoun yonder"--A name, by the way, which the
inn had acquired from the use which the saint upon the sign-post was
making of his pastoral crook.

"Indeed, Dinah?" said Mr. Winterblossom, gravely taking out his
spectacles, and wiping them before he opened the roll of paper; "some
boy's daubing, I suppose, whose pa and ma wish to get him into the
Trustees' School, and so are beating about for a little interest.--But I
am drained dry--I put three lads in last season; and if it had not been
my particular interest with the secretary, who asks my opinion now and
then, I could not have managed it. But giff-gaff, say I.--Eh! What, in
the devil's name, is this?--Here is both force and keeping--Who can this
be, my lady?--Do but see the sky-line--why, this is really a little
bit--an exquisite little bit--Who the devil can it be? and how can he
have stumbled upon the dog-hole in the Old Town, and the snarling b----I
beg your ladyship ten thousand pardons--that kennels there?"

"I dare say, my lady," said a little miss of fourteen, her eyes growing
rounder and rounder, and her cheeks redder and redder, as she found
herself speaking, and so many folks listening--"O la! I dare say it is
the same gentleman we met one day in the Low-wood walk, that looked like
a gentleman, and yet was none of the company, and that you said was a
handsome man."

"I did not say handsome, Maria," replied her ladyship; "ladies never say
men are handsome--I only said he looked genteel and interesting."

"And that, my lady," said the young parson, bowing and smiling, "is, I
will be judged by the company, the more flattering compliment of the
two--We shall be jealous of this Unknown presently."

"Nay, but," continued the sweetly communicative Maria, with some real
and some assumed simplicity, "your ladyship forgets--for you said
presently after, you were sure he was no gentleman, for he did not run
after you with your glove which you had dropped--and so I went back
myself to find your ladyship's glove, and he never offered to help me,
and I saw him closer than your ladyship did, and I am sure he is
handsome, though he is not very civil."

"You speak a little too much and too loud, miss," said Lady Penelope, a
natural blush reinforcing the _nuance_ of rouge by which it was usually
superseded.

"What say you to that, Squire Mowbray?" said the elegant Sir Bingo
Binks.

"A fair