about the Madeira, had it from the man

whom Perceval meant to bid for him."

66

"By the way,

do you know one Richards of Whinbury?" demanded Dunstew of the

two,

"who has written to me about some

local gas scheme."

Dunt held his tongue for the present. "No," said Chip, much crestfallen; "but I'll make a point of finding it out before I see you again."

66

"I know the fellar," interposed Major Shanter. But he did not say it at all comfortably, so that Mrs. Shanter swooped upon him instantly.

"I'm sure, Percy, you do nothing of the kind; or you must have met him that day when you slipped off to smoke at the 'Three Greyhounds,' and you smelt too much to be taken home with me inside the carriage. I assure you, Mr. Dunt, Percy says he

knows every one he has played billiards with at an inn."

"I have been told," said James, "that Richards is a leading man in every Whinbury scheme. In fact, he and an attorney named Webb, seem to manage the town. between them."

"How long, Mr. Butler ?" asked Miss Amesham, demurely, "have you been so well up in Whinbury politics? I thought you were always deep in Mill, or steeped in Carlyle, and let the parties rave' as they pleased."

"I

"Don't make fun of an unfortunate would-be scholar," returned James. hear so much, both at home and at Aston, of how this little world of Slopeshire and its marches are managed, or rather mismanaged, that something will stick even in the brain of a book-worm."

"I drive in regularly every afternoon to Whinbury," remarked Mrs. Shanter, but without her usual glibness; “and I've heard of Richards, or rather his son, from my especial pet draper, Weston: he has a pretty daughter, who is to marry young Richards, quite a catch for the girl I suppose."

66

'My dear Clara," interrupted Miss Amesham, "you are getting to gossip almost as much as a Slopeshire gentleman, which I hope, for the credit of our sex, we have not quite come to yet; do not give us any more about the loves of draper's daughters and gas-lighter's sons.

"I didn't say that, Miss Amesham," explained Mr. Dunstew; "I remarked that Richards was secretary of a gas-company that had applied to me to become a director."

Well, it's all the same thing," insisted

Miss Amesham, with irresistible feminine logic.

James was sitting with his back to the fire, it is true, yet he never seemed to have felt the full heat of it till this moment; moreover, he began to sip his wine and crumble his bread with great assiduity.

"But I assure you, Jessie," pursued Mrs. Shanter," she's a most interesting girl, with quite a touching expression; and I took a fancy to her from the first."

The Major continued, "I'm sure I don't know what the dooce I should do, if it wasn't for that drive into Whinbury; when Cattle of ours was on leave he used to go and see the trains come in at his father's. Maloney went one winter with me, when we were at Hounslow, to see a Christmas-tree at the Crystal Palace. The papers said

every one ought to go and see it. Bryce, after he sold out, fished six weeks for a pike of fifteen pounds on his Irish estate, but the miller had let off the dam and laded the beast out, after Bryce had been twice. Hard lines, wasn't it?"

In such sweet converse flowed onwards the feast at Dunt's. After dinner Miss Amesham sang a good many Tennysonian lyrics, and Mrs. Shanter accompanied her. James turned over the leaves, and, not being able to read music, succeeded but indifferently in this office. Still Miss Amesham, in various climaxes of her balladsas when the superannuated nurse happily suggests fetching in the baby, or when the hero in Maud expresses a determination to convert his remains into a border of bachelor buttons, and other showy vegetables, at the approach of his mistress's