nd fifth cousins may, if
they please, give a place at the side-table, and a seat in the carriage
with the lady's maid, if driving backwards will not make us sick."

"They may give it to those who will take it," said Clara; "but I am
determined to eat bread of my own buying--I can do twenty things, and I
am sure some one or other of them will bring me all the little money I
will need. I have been trying, John, for several months, how little I
can live upon, and you would laugh if you heard how low I have brought
the account."

"There is a difference, Clara, between fanciful experiments and real
poverty--the one is a masquerade, which we can end when we please, the
other is wretchedness for life."

"Methinks, brother," replied Miss Mowbray, "it would be better for you
to set me an example how to carry my good resolutions into effect, than
to ridicule them."

"Why, what would you have me do?" said he, fiercely--"turn postilion, or
rough-rider, or whipper-in?--I don't know any thing else that my
education, as I have used it, has fitted me for--and then some of my old
acquaintances would, I dare say, give me a crown to drink now and then
for old acquaintance' sake."

"This is not the way, John, that men of sense think or speak of serious
misfortunes," answered his sister; "and I do not believe that this is so
serious as it is your pleasure to make it."

"Believe the very worst you can think," replied he, "and you will not
believe bad enough!--You have neither a guinea, nor a house, nor a
friend;--pass but a day, and it is a chance that you will not have a
brother."

"My dear John, you have drunk hard--rode hard."

"Yes--such tidings deserved to be carried express, especially to a young
lady who receives them so well," answered Mowbray, bitterly. "I suppose,
now, it will make no impression, if I were to tell you that you have it
in your power to stop all this ruin?"

"By consummating my own, I suppose?--Brother, I said you could not make
me tremble, but you have found a way to do it."

"What, you expect I am again to urge you with Lord Etherington's
courtship?--That _might_ have saved all, indeed--But that day of grace
is over."

"I am glad of it, with all my spirit," said Clara; "may it take with it
all that we can quarrel about!--But till this instant I thought it was
for this very point that this long voyage was bound, and that you were
endeavouring to persuade me of the reality of the danger of the storm,
i