not be hard upon him: indeed, my love, you must not. I am very much afraid,”—and Mrs. Jericho looked at the youth with new affection—“very much afraid that you’re an extravagant child.”

“’Pon my life, my dear madam, when I see what other young fellows do, I feel myself a mean man; sometimes despise myself. You don’t know how I struggle to keep down the miser in me. I’ve a dreadful idea sometimes, of what my end will be.”

“My dear Basil!” cried the mother, in tender alarm.

“Sometimes, dear lady, I look into the middle of next century, and see myself a wretched being. Long beard, nails like fish-hooks, one shirt a year, and dinners of periwinkles. Unless I exert all my strength of mind, I shall go off in mildew—die a miser. ‘He denied himself the common necessaries of life’—that’s what I sometimes fear will be my history—‘and thus, it is believed, hastened his wretched and untimely end.’”

“Basil! How can you!”

“That’s my fate, I fear. ‘On his room being searched, bank-notes to a large amount were found in an old tinder-box, and a hundred and fifty guineas of the time of George the Second, secreted in a German flute!’ Sometimes, when I’m melancholy and disloyal, I think that’s my fate; but I’ll struggle against the feeling,” said Basil with filial emphasis—“I will struggle, my dear lady.”

Whereupon Mrs. Jericho, haply comforted by his moral heroism, assured her boy that she would not let Mr. Jericho rest until he gave a definitive answer to his son-in-law’s moderate proposition.

“That is all I want to know, my dear lady. Whether I’m[Pg 34] to stop short at sudden ruin, or to go on. I’m disgusted with life at present, but I’m open to any arrangement that shall make me change my opinion. Hallo! Aggy, why you’re come out of a rainbow.”

[Pg 34]

This sudden salutation was addressed to Miss Agatha Pennibacker who, fine and gauze-like as a dragonfly, floated into the room, and settled upon a sofa. “I have told you twenty times,” said the young lady with face severely set, “I will not be called Aggy. It’s hideous.”

“Then why don’t you change it? I say, mother, when are you going to consign these girls to India? Market’s full here. Bless you, such a glut of wedding-rings, I’m told they hang mackerel on ’em.” And Basil laughed saucily at Agatha; and Agatha pouted contemptuously.

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