CHAPTER III.

"TO PERSONS ABOUT TO MARRY."-The Globe.

WHAT a catalogue of hopes and fears could be gathered together if the feelings of all the inhabitants of only one house could be analyized. How variously expressed would be each thought, and how painful the recital; for happiness, after all, is only comparative, being made up for the most part of excited hopes, or of the cessation of temporary pain.

The house of Colonel Delville may be taken as an example of this truth; and commencing from the basement and ascending gradually to the roof, it contained, perhaps, as great a variety of conflicting feelings-made up, to be sure, of a co-mingling of the absurd and serious-as any house containing thirteen rooms could well hold.

Mrs. Darby Pobbs was, according to her own account, the widow of a general officer, but who, to the day of his death, regularly attended at a large building in Saint Martin's-le-grand, and probably from a philanthrophic or other motive, distributed letters entrusted to his care, every morning in the neighbourhood of Stamford Street; in fact-for truth will out when a great man is no more-he was a general postman; but as he died before the golden promises of Joseph Adey were realized, Mrs. Pobbs (for she dropped the Darby at his decease,) was left shillingless; she therefore was delighted, when in answer to an advertisement, she found a home in the family of Colonel Delville, where she was installed as housekeeper.

Mrs. Pobbs was short; her face fat, round, and pale; two light-grey eyes twinkled beside a little round beacon of a nose, which towards the apex possessed a settled redness. She wore a little net cap at the back of her head, to give place to a light flaxen front; a neat white muslin kerchief, fastened by a large jet black heart, with a full made black silk gown, a white apron with two little pockets

like watch-pockets at a bed head-black velvet shoes, and a little wicker basket lined with pink calico, and plentifully filled with keys, will complete her portrait.

manager;

Mrs. Pobbs was not the most literary lady of the day, and had a great tendency to miscall everything and everybody, and she cut a railway completely through the English language, and a tunnel under every word of difficulty, still she was an excellent and to use her own words, "6 as ecomical as a poor law garden." Her only extravagance was "spasms," which she had at regular intervals during the day, and to allay which, a little stone bottle was the remedy, and the redness of her nose the result. She sat looking over the "Lacerated News," and waiting for Thady Sullivan, the butler, whom she had invited to take a cup of tea.

"Come in my child and shut the door, or that varmint wot kittened in my beaver bonnet, will come in and do it again, Mr. Thady."

"And bad cess to its want of manners, Mrs. Pobbs; an how are you this plisint afternoon?"

said a red-haired, blue-eyed gem of the sea, as he sat down "as if to the manner born."

Quite well, considering my usual complaint, Mr. Thady; and how's yourself, since your journey to the great medropolis?"

"Quite well, thank you, mam; though that dare devil, Tim Fligg, as leads dark Mr. Markham, druv from London as if he was mad, and wanted to get as quick as he could to the lunatic asylum." "Tim Fligg! oh, you have been with him?-how did you manage that?"

"I did'nt manage it, mam; it was the Fligge boy who will manage any thing or body. So he just opened the seat beyant Mr. Markham-for you know his is a four-wheeled coffee-mill sort of chay-and tould me to hould my tongue, as the master wouldn't know it."

"And did he know it?"

"In a minute!

'Who's that,' says he, in the

first ten yards, 'between me and the wind.' 'Colonel Delville's servant, Sir,' says Tim Fligg, 'who has 'But not in my chaise,'

had business in London.'

says the master. However, he bade me bide; and

if I had been a dacent witness in the thrial-box, he

could not have put more questions to me."

"That's odd," said Mrs. Pobbs; "because the Colonel and Mr. Markham never speak."

"No more they do!" replied Thady, as if suddenly struck with the lightening of a bright idea, for he recollected that he had answered every question very discriptively; and he began to account for Tim Fligg's muffled chuckle, as in mock solemnity he handed him from the chaise.

"That Tim's the devil in bright buttons," muttered Thady.

"I shouldn't wonder now if he was!" charitably responded Mrs. Pobbs. And with this remark the couple may be left to discuss the tea and etcetras.

Colonel Delville was one of the old school, who left his regiment when he married, as he thought no soldier ought to remain in the army when he ought to be at home. He was tall, and possessed a commanding air; very laconic in speaking or writing, and particularly inaccessible to strangers. He was therefore set down as a proud man; and the habitual shade of thought which tinctured his features,