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the exceeding elegance of that title. 'Why won't Dobbin do ?" said he, "the creature looks exactly like a Dobbin." And Dobbin he called it perpetually, in spite of all remonstrance. The pony was steady and strong, and Mrs. Dallocourt's appreciation of its merits was too high to allow her to part with it; so she retained it in her possession in spite of its ugliness and its name continued, a subject of variance between mother and son.

"Dobbin has fallen lame," announced Leonard, "and is not fit to be used."

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"If you mean the pony," returned Mrs. Dallocourt, I am extremely sorry to hear it." And then she proceeded to put divers questions respecting the mode of its cure, and the probable duration of its incapacity.

And, pray," she asked, when these queries had been satisfied, how do you propose to go to the Hawclaves' dance this evening?"

"I am going with the Melburns," said Leonard. "I met Frank Melburn this morning, and told him about Dobbin, and he agreed to pick me up on the road. He is going in a dog-cart with his brothers, and I am to have the fourth seat."

Mr. Melburn was the rector of the parish, and his three sons, clever, stolid young men, the envy of all papas and mammas who had sons destined for professions, were at home for brief holidays. They took their pleasure in a serious, business-like manner, conscientiously endeavouring to acquit themselves satisfactorily at all dances and other entertainments to which they might be invited by their father's friends. Notwithstanding these efforts, they were less popular in the neighbourhood than Leonard Dallocourt. Mrs. Dallocourt gave her shoulders a contemptuous shrug as she listened to her son's reply.

"Lively company!" she remarked, "You might almost as well have been alone with Alighieri."

But Leonard did not like to hear his friends so slightingiy spoken of.

"You are quite mistaken, mother. Frank Melburn is not at all a bad fellow, and no more are the others; they can talk very entertainingly, when they please, and be much more worth listening to than others who talk faster. I assure you they are inuch better company than you take them for !"

"They might easily be that," said Mrs. Daliocourt, and gave a sarcastic little laugh. She was in the habit of scattering her ridicule broadcast amongst all her acquaintance, and these highly meritorious young men invariably had their full share.

"Well," said Leonard, who saw neither pleasure nor profit in pursuing the subject further, "I have a piece of news to tell you;"

66 Miss Dobson came

and his mother looked up in expectation. home unexpectedly last week, and is going to be at the Hawclaves' to-night!"

At this announcement a remarkable change came over Mrs. Dallocourt's countenance. Her eyes opened wider than was their wont, unaccustomed wrinkles appeared upon her forehead, her lips were parted, and her cheeks were flushed; there was not a feature of the handsome and haughty face uninfluenced by the general commotion.

"Leonard," she said, after a short interval of consideration, "I must go to that party, too. I have a mind to see Miss Dobson?"

It was Leonard's turn to be surprised then; and he stared in blank astonishment.

How on earth are you going to get there?" he inquired; "and why are you so specially anxious to see Miss Dobson? She is not such a very interesting young person."

"She is, I think as interesting as most young people," retorted Mrs. Dallocourt, "and certainly more interesting than a good many. She is Mr. Dobson's only daughter; and he has but one son."

Leonard was silent; marvelling within himself why his mother should have thought it necessary to make the last two statements. That Miss Dobson and her brother were the only children of the squire of that name, was a well-known and acknowledged fact that no one ever dreamed of disputing, and its formal proclamation upon the present occasion appeared to him an incomprehensible work of supererogation.

"Yes," said he, after a little while, "she certainly is Mr. Dobson's only daughter; and she is very much like him in the face. I can't say what she is like in other respects, because she hardly ever speaks, She doesn't dance very well; the Squire don't dance at all.'

As for the Squire's dancing," cried Mrs. Dallocourt a little impatiently," that is quite irrelevant to the question. I wish, Leonard, you would learn to talk relevantly."

"If I knew what the question was," replied Leonard with placidity, "I would endeavour to talk relevantly to it. What is the question?"

Mrs. Dallocourt looked rather puzzled.

"I don't know that there is any particular question," she said at length. 'But I tell you, Leonard, I must go to the Hawclaves' to-night. I am quite determined about it. It is a long while since I have seen Miss Dobson to speak to, and I should like to renew our acquaintance; and as these Christmas entertainments must be

very nearly over by this time, seeing that Christmas day fell something like a month ago, I may not find another such good chance for some time. I must go to-night. If Alighieri can't take me I must go somehow else." And Mrs. Dallocourt gave her head an energetic toss to denote the firmness of her resolution.

"It is very easy to say somehow else," observed Leonard, "but it is not easy to settle how somehow else is to be. This is a busy day with the people, and there is no animal in tue place that I know of, either to be borrowed or hired. Of course, if we had known beforehand what a fix we should be in, we might have hired a fly from Gurton; but it is too late for that now."

Gurton was the nearest town to the cottage ornée, and was about eight miles off.

"It would have been quite unnecessary," replied Mrs. Dallocourt; "and there is no occasion to be under any anxiety about the matter whatever. There will, probably, be a spare seat in the Hufferton carriage, and I am quite sure that I shall be welcome to occupy it. It will be obliged, on the way to the Hawclaves', to pass within a few yards of our gate, and it may as well stop and take me in."

"You don't mean to say," said Leonard, "that you will stand at the gate and hail the coachman?"

Of course not," replied Mrs. Dallocourt.

"But I don't see why you should not just walk over and speak about it beforehand."

Leonard laid down his knife and fork and looked solemnly into his mother's face.

"Mother," he began, “I don't object to the walk. Pray, don't think such a thing for a minute. But--"

"On, for goodness sake don't look so grave about it!" interrupted Mrs. Dallocourt. "If there is one thing I dislike more than another, it is to see people discuss the most trivial things in the world with an air of ponderous wisdom."

Leonard laughed, and took up his knife aud fork. His mother was evidently "put out" just then, a malady to which she was subject at intervals, and he was willing to do his utmost to soothe her; but he held his own views upon the subject under discussion, and did not keep them to himself.

"and it

"I won't look wiser than I can help," said he; certainly is a trivial matter; but I think that we are inclined to encroach too much upon the Dobsons. It seems to me that I am constantly walking over to Hufferton to ask favours. Besides, how do you know that there will be a spare seat in the carriage? They may have friends staying with them who will take up all the

room !"

"They may have, and they may not have," returned Mrs. Dallocourt; "and the chances are that they have not. As for these constant favours that you speak of, I don't know anything at all about them."

"There were the lizards," explained Leonard, " and there is the shooting."

But Mrs. Dallocourt, however, would listen to no talk of lizards or shooting. She laughed to scorn all the delicate scruples of her son, declared that Squire Dobson must be a Goth and a snob if he declined to accede to her request, and waxed so earnestly and so eloquently impressive that Leonard yielded, as he generally did, and set out to do her bidding.

Caroline," said Squire Dobson to his wife, as he stood, poker in hand, before the fire that evening, "what do you think young Dallocourt came for to-day?"

"Really, Charles," replied Mrs. Dobson from the sofa, “I have not even the beginning of an idea, and feel far too languid to make a suggestion. If it was about anything of importance I beg that you will tell me without further preface; and if it was unimportant, pray let me know it at once, in order that I may not be left in suspense. In the delicate state of my health suspense is the worst thing possible.'

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It was his mother that sent him," pursued the Squire, poking manfully away at the coals. "I hate that woman!"

Mrs. Dobson closed her eyes. She always did close her eyes when anything approaching to strong language issued from her husband's lips.

"I hate that woman!" repeated Mr. Dobson, as he settled himself in his arm-chair. "She is a woman who would swallow you from head to heels, if you gave her but the tip of your finger. I wonder what she'll be up to next! She has taken to ordering our carriage about already!"

"Ordering our carriage about !" echoed Mrs. Dobson in accents of unaffected astonishment. And then the Squire enlightened her concerning the errand on which Leonard had coine.

"Mrs. Dobson saw nothing to be displeased at.

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"I am sure," said she, as far as I am concerned Mrs Dallocourt is exceedingly welcome to the seat. I hope, Charles, you did not refuse her."

Mr. Dobson replied that he had had a great mind to do so; from which Mrs. Dobson understood that he had not done it; and she languidly expressed her gratification.

"It is one of my principles," continued she, "never to refuse to do a kindness to anyone, provided it can be done without the slightest inconvenience to myself. Now, the present occasion is

just such a one as I like. If I had been going myself this evening I should have made a point of fabricating some excuse, whereby the honour of Mrs. Dallocourt's company in the carriage might have been avoided, even had there been room for her, for she is so overpowering and energetic a talker that her society is more than I can bear; but, considering that I never had the slightest intention of going, and that her presence in the carriage will make no manner of difference to me, I feel thankful that I am able to render her a kindness!"

"You talk exactly like a woman," replied Mr. Dobson; "you talk exactly like a woman!"

"I have no doubt I do," replied Mrs. Dobson, "and I consider it a fact to be proud of. It is one great consolation to me in the midst of my nervous affections, that at least no one can accuse me of that departure from feminine characteristics so prevalent amongst some members of my sex."

"Don't you see," pursued the Squire, without paying much attention to this complacent comment on his reproach, "don't you see that the oftener we accede to these cool requests of hers, the oftener she will prefer them? She is like the horseleech that cries 'give, give!' I don't care twopence for the seat; but it shows the spirit of the woman. And, pray, how did she know that it would not be wanted. I tell you there will be no end to it. It is not the first time that she has served us so, nor yet the second. I have not forgotten about those lizards!"

"And you

"I offered her those," remarked Mrs. Dobson. know, Charles, you were always railing at their ugliness.”

This was true; but it is one thing to grumble at one's possessious, and another to wish to part with them. The Squire growled uneasily, and vented his spleen upon the unoffending coals. The green lizards had been brought to him by a friend after distant travels, and though he had always derided and railed at them, as his wife observed, he had viewed them with a secret complacency, and had seen them conveyed to the cottage ornée with feelings the reverse of amiable. It was from the summary pouncing upon those foreign reptiles that arose the dislike of Mrs. Dallocourt that caused him to regard her simplest action with an angry distrust, and the decided expression of which had necessitated the closing of Mrs. Dobson's eyes.