86 V. AMONG THE WILD FOWL. ISSY had honoured me with her company at lun SIS cheon, and, while plying her knife and fork assiduously, favoured me with her opinions on things in general. She was in a somewhat speculative mood. 'I haven't growed yet,' she observed. The black dog at the farm has quite stopped growing-but I haven't stopped-how's that? It's good for growing to stand in the rain without your hat-that's the way the pigs get fat. There are twelve little piggies — did you know? only old Grumpy eat two-and my bantam cock is laying his eggs in the white goose's house-isn't he ridiculous? I was at Nancy Brown's yesterday, having fried potatoes, and forgot my boots. I do declare, here's Horace-what a plague he is, to be sure, to come when we're dining! I thought you had been with Letty, Horace?' she said, as that young gentleman entered the room, and then she returned to her knife and fork without taking further notice of him. That ingenuous young gentleman, however, declared that he had not been with Letty (a transparent fiction, for the two had been visible in the shrubbery half an hour before, and how he eased his conscience I don't know), but that he was going down to shoot whaups at the Mussel Pier, and had come round this way to take me with him. Horace was the son of old Dean Lovelace, and (of course like the rest of us in these parts) one of Letty's lovers. The Dean's duties lay quite at the other side of Hazeldean, so that he could not be considered exactly a neighbour, though few days elapsed when his son, on leave' from the metropolis, might not be seen helping Letty to water her flowers, or the Captain to arrange his birds. The Dean was a polished churchman of the old school, who played a good hand at whist, and did not vex himself with the spiritual controversies of a younger generation. He could be quietly and majestically indignant if you trumped his winning suit; but on the whole his temper was even and bland; he was not anxious to play the inquisitor; and though personally rather inclining, to the High Church party (in so far, at least, as a love for old books and old habits and old wine was involved), he would no more have dreamt of trying to turn Mr. Stanley or Mr. Maurice out of the church than he would have dreamt of turning them out of the club. The one act would have been quite as offensive to his natural courtliness as the other; for these gentlemen having been regularly introduced and ballotted for, had as good a right to remain in the 'Athenæum' as he himself had, and no man-lay or cleric-was entitled to impeach their honesty. The church was wide enough for them all, he would say. He frankly confessed that-being satisfied with St. Paul-he had little acquaintance with modern theology; nor did he care for argument; even when attacked by the Doctor he seldom showed fight, unless for the odd trick. When the Doctor asserted that Churches took as naturally to persecution as ducks to the water, the Dean would content himself by replying that men of an intolerant disposition were to be found in other professions (the medical, of course, being excepted); when the Doctor eloquently denounced the bondage of subscription, the Dean, filling his tastefullycut claret-glass-bunches of grapes and vine leaves formed the pattern-with '41, would remark tranquilly that he had never felt the worse for it; and it was evident that he spoke the truth. It was difficult to come to close quarters with this courteous, high-bred, well-dressed, old-fashioned, impalpable gentleman; and so the Doctor found it. There was a good deal of the father in the son,—only it might be doubted whether an additional five-and-twenty years would as effectually tame the younger Lovelace into bland compliance and dignified neutrality. The Dean had, in fact, reduced the great modern principle of 'non-intervention' into a practical rule of conduct. He carried neutral goods, which are not liable to be seized by belligerents. Whereas the youth never saw a scamp beating his wife, or a big boy thrashing a little one, without immediately mixing in the fray,-occasionally to the serious detriment of his eyes. 'Now,' said Sissy, deliberately, when she had finished, 'tell me a story, Horace.' Sissy was pleased to hold that Horace had a gift in that direction, which he was bound to exercise on all occasions for her delectation. This is the age of 'verses adapted for young persons,' -grave men leave their books to compose songs for the nursery and ballads for their babes. 'I don't see why one shouldn't have a shy at it,' said Horace. 'It seems to pay. In the meantime, Sissy, here's a little thing translated from the Gaelic of Ossian, his minor poems, and you'll scarcely find anything more eminently instructive anywhere, even in English.' ON BABY. I. A rosy brat Goes pit-a-pat, Tumbles down, Bumps her crown; Bobbing, sobbing, Cribbing, fibbing, Eating, bleating, Chaffing, daffing, One and all together Our blue-bell among the heather! II. Kicking her legs Under the pegs, |