king him so roughly by the arm that his throat rattled as though he were dying, and he opened one eye very widely, exclaiming, "God bless my soul! what's the

matter?"

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Matter enough, Mr. Tymmons; what a pretty example it ith to your sonths to thee you thleeping away your whole time in thith way?"

Mr. Tymmons now opened both his eyes, removed his hands from the pocket of his unmentionables, stretched them above his head, and gave one loud, long, "sleep-no-more" sort of yawn. After which, placing his arm round his wife's waist, and drawing her towards him, said, "Well, duckey, what is it?"

"It is too bad your being fast athleep at thith time of day," persisted Mrs. Tymmons.

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Ehem, I never sleep, lovey, when you are with me,” said the tender Tymmons, with a look that would have brought any other man into Doctors' Commons.

"Well, but, dear," euphonized Mrs. T., condescendingly seating herself upon his knee, and stroking his fat red cheek, "you really should not thleep in the middle of the day, and I want to speak to you upon buthineth.”

"Your business is my pleasure," replied the gallant husband, taking his wife's fat face in both his hands, and imprinting a kiss upon her voluminous lips; "what is it, my lily?"

"Why, here'th Mither Hothkinth inthith upon dining with uth to-day, because Miss MacScrew's here."

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"Egad, that's capital," cried Mr. Tymmons, rubbing his hands. "I'll give him every opportunity of winning his bet, though it's against myself; but if he gets the old girl, it will be such a famous thing for the family!" "Yeth, but while heth talking over the old girl, how will you talk over the old lady ?" asked Mrs. Tymmons. Oh, easily enough; leave that to me; I have not been humbugging her these four years without knowing how to manage her. I must only lay it on a little thicker about her being so exceedingly clever, and having such a wonderful knowledge of business; abuse Hoskins a little more, and not look too business-like myself, so as to let her think she could easily overreach me; interlard my letters with similes and poetry, and that sort of thing, which Rush can always supply me with, you know, lovey, and then I can knead her like dough."

"Ah, you gentlemen" (for common people never say

men and women) "are sad dethievers, sad dethievers," said Mrs. Tymmons, with a most proper wifely look of conscious inferiority, and vivid admiration for the stupendous structure of her husband's masculine intellect.

"Now, lovey," resumed her sposo, drawing his chair close to the table and dipping his pen into the ink, "let me finish my letter to the old lady, and order dinner at half past four, and be sure we've a bottle of that old Burgundy port that I bought at Lord Cramwell's sale, for Hoskins likes a good bottle of wine as well as any man; and perhaps, by dint of it, I may get him to suppress that pamphlet about Mary Lee; for it won't do to let him go too great lengths against this family, especially as I have had Richard Brindal with me all the morning, who tells me that Mary Lee positively refuses to marry him, so that scheme has failed; and if every other does too, the old lady may begin to suspect both my abilities and my allegiance, and that's what must not be. So you must tell Hoskins, ducky, that unless he is content to be more pacific towards the dowager for the future, and, moreover, to publicly attribute his being so to my remonstrances and interference, he need not expect any trystrings with Miss MacScrew in this house."

"I will, dear," responded Mrs. Tymmons, moving towards the door.

"And, lovey," cried Mr. T., calling her back, "be sure we have some souse, for I am particklar partial to

As Alonzo was not only charioteer, but "chief butler," the asses could not be fed till the horse was attended to; consequently, Mrs. Tymmons had to fuss about for some time before the luncheon was ready, to Miss MacScrew's no small annoyance; for, being both cold and hungry, the warmth of Mrs. Hoskins's protestations became doubly disagreeable to her; but when luncheon was announced, and he led her into the dining room, he contrived to transfer such a quantity of cold

As there may be persons in the world as ignorant as I myself was respecting souse, till I discovered what it was in an American cookery book that recently came in my way, I think it right to impart the information I then and there acquired, by informing such ignoramuses that souse is nothing more nor less than macadamized pig's feet and ears, plunged into a Stygian lake of vinegar, and mummied with spices.

beef and mashed potatoes to her plate, that in a short time she became not only affable, but facetious, as she crammed herself into good-humour.

"Now, to prove what stories you tell," said she to the amiable Peter, her mouth so full as to render her words almost inaudible, "you say you would do anything if I would marry you-he! he he! Now the only thing that would make me marry you, I know you would not, and could not do-he! he he!"

"Name it," said Peter, gallantly, "and, be it what it may, augh tak my cousin Sarah and the girls to witness that augh'll do it; and if ye prefere the promise being legally attested, augh'll call in Mr. Tymmons, so just say what it is."

He! he he!" tittered Miss MacScrew, "you can't, can't; so I'm quite safe, quite safe. You would not play a tune on the fiddle in the midst of one of your sermons, now, would you ?" said she, triumphantly.

For a moment Mr. Hoskins's visage elongated, but soon rallying, he replied, "Well! yes, even that augh'll do; but augh don't know if I can pley the feedle, because, ye see, augh never tried; and as it may tak me some leetle time to laren, augh should like to know how long ye'd give me to do it."

"Oh, till doomsday, till doomsday," chuckled Miss MacScrew.

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Augh declare that sort of ad græcas calendas is not fair, and augh think augh ought to insist upon a definite time being named for the match to come off, as they say on the turf," cried Hoskins.

"Moth dethidedly," said Mrs. Tymmons and her daughters unanimously, the latter much amused at the trap Miss MacScrew had got herself into, for they knew their worthy cousin to be a man capable de tout.

"But," resumed Mrs. Tymmons, who thought it only prudent not to appear too eager in forwarding her kinsman's designs, "you surely never would or could play the violin in the pulpit; it would be thuch a dithgrathe to a clergyman, and particularly to you, who have given uth thuch evangelical dithcourtheth of late."

"That's the vary reason," said Peter, "augh'll not only do it, but augh'll mak it an instrument of great instrooktion to my congregation. Augh don't see why sarmons may not be foond in feedles as well as stones, and goode in averything.”

"He'll never do it," whispered Mrs. Tymmons, very diplomatically, to Miss MacScrew, "he couldn't; you know it would be quite impossible ;" and then added aloud, as if to play off Hoskins, "Now really, my dear Mith MacScrew, you ought to name thome fixed period for putting my couthin to the tetht, after thuth a gallant offer on hith part."

"Yes, you really ought," chorussed the young ladies. "He, he, he !" giggled Miss MacScrew, abstractedly helping herself to some more beef; "well, next midsummer, then, next midsummer; fine weather you know, fine weather, and the church will be fuller."

"Very true, only it's a long time to wait, for many a slip between the cup and the lip; but we'll make sure of one, at all events," said he, pouring out two glasses of wine, and presenting one to Miss MacScrew, while he took the other himself. "Here's success to our wishes, which ye'll allow is fair, Miss MacScrew; for though augh don't know what your wishes may be, I know perfectly what my own are."

At this juncture Mr. Joseph Tymmons entered, having just returned from a wedding five miles off, and gave a most glowing description of the bride's beauty and bonnet, and of the bridegroom's waistcoat and Waterloo blue cravat.

"Our wedding shall beat all the weddings that have been for the last century," whispered Peter, drawing his chair so close to Miss MacScrew's that he nearly found himself in her lap.

"Get away, get away," said she, backing her chair, and beating him away with her hand as one does a wasp; "get away.

"She partly is to blame who has been tried;
He comes too near who comes to be denied,'

you know."

"Yes, yes; augh know that's not worth coming for; but augh hop to come for something better next midsummer."

"Where ith Rush, Joseph ?" inquired Mrs. Tymmons. "Oh!" said Joseph, "in the clouds, as usual. He went to see the industrious fleas yesterday, and has been writing an ode on them ever since."

"Ith quite shocking," moaned Mrs. Tymmons; "he studies so hard he'll kill himself."

"No doubt, he'll go out like a rushlight some of these days," said Peter, with one of his stentorian laughs. "Oh, you've no thoul for poetry," said Mrs. Tymmons; but, really, some of hith things are quite ath good ath Lord Byron's!"

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"Very likely," replied Hoskins, with great gravity: "while, at the same time, it must be a great source of satisfaction to you, Sarah, to think that he'll never write anything as bad as Don Juan, Heaven and Earth, and the Vision of Judgment."

"It ith, indeed," said Mrs. Tymmons, turning up her eyes with an exulting look of maternal pride and gratulation.

Here a short pause ensued in the conversation, while Alonzo was summoned to take away the things. Till four o'clock nothing of any importance occurred, except Master Grimstone's stealing a lump of damson cheese with his fingers, as it was exiting with Alonzo, and afterward surreptitiously wiping the aforesaid fingers in the back of Miss MacScrew's dress, which varied without improving it; but at four o'clock a deep and solemn sound was heard; it was Alonzo outside the drawing-room door, giving three distinct thumps with the kitchen-poker against the lid of a copper fish-kettle. This was an invention of the gifted Seraphina's, who knew that at Blichingly Park, Campfield, and, in short, all the great houses she had ever heard of, a gong announced to the assembled guests when it was time to dress for dinner, and this was the best imitation of it she could devise. As Miss MacScrew invariably transferred the black holyoaks from the Leghorn bonnet to the pocket-handkerchief toque for dinner, she ascended with the young ladies for the purpose of doing so, which left Mrs. Tymmons an opportunity of making known her husband's wishes to Mr. Hoskins, and extorting from him (in the plenitude of his delight at having so far succeeded with Miss MacScrew) a promise to comply with them.

The young ladies and their guest had scarcely re-descended to the drawing-room, and been joined by Mr. Tymmons (who entered in high good-humour, having succeeded in coaxing his wife into having a fire in the drawing-room), when that universal genius and ubiquitous individual, Alonzo, announced dinner, which he had no sooner done than a great deal of sprightly badipage ensued between Messrs. Tymmons and Hoskins,