with a good-tempered smile, gives a very pleasant reason for all the oddities of the good, dear, old Colonel. He will not afford himself the luxury of a carriage; therefore, a carriage is always sent for him. He will not take care of himself at his own table; and therefore he must always dine with one of his best friends. Why, it was only last winter that, having bound himself by previous promise to grant the request of a petitioner, he consented to become godfather, with the enforced proviso that he should not give his godson a single ounce of plate. Up to this moment, the child—Bones Mizzlemist, eldest son of Mizzlemist of Doctors’ Commons—is without a mug. Colonel Bones—he served somewhere in some regiment at some date in the militia—Colonel Bones insists upon playing the pauper on an annuity of fifty pounds, and the world lets the poor old fellow have his feeble whim, his little joke. Very right; an old man, and to be humoured.

That slight young man, with the handsome face of blank meaning (a fine lamp with no light in it) is Sir Arthur Hodmadod. He is scarcely cool in his baronetcy, having only succeeded to the title in the spring. He bows to Miss Candituft a little timidly; for even yet he does not feel himself altogether safe. He looks at her as though he still beheld in her the[Pg 56] dread possibility of Lady Hodmadod. However, he takes heart, and rides up to the carriage.—Only hear him.

[Pg 56]

“That’s a nice thing there;” and Hodmadod points towards Jenny White, the schoolmaster’s daughter.

“Where?” asks Miss Candituft, opening her eyes to take in everybody.

“There; that thing with the—what is it?—the silver bee; isn’t it a bee? buttoning the black riband at her throat.”

“Yes, it is a bee,” says Miss Candituft, using her glass; and then staring at the baronet. “It is a bee. Ha, Sir Arthur! What an aquiline eye you have! Not even a bee escapes you! Well, it is a bee.”

“Really, a beautiful thing. So white, and pink, and smooth; so like Dresden china, you might put the wench upon a mantel-piece. Eh?” and Hodmadod looks for the lady’s opinion.

Miss Candituft stares at Sir Arthur; she did not expect to be appealed to upon so domestic an arrangement. And then, without winking, and with a fixed wondering face, Miss Candituft says, “I don’t know.”

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