would you believe, it was an ignoble thing; all
flirtation and curates. The sea, indeed! A pond
would be fitter to read it by ; and one with a
good many geese on."

"Was ever such simplicity?" said Mrs. Dodd.
"Why, my dear, that phrase about the sea does
not mean anything. I shall have you believing
that Mr. So-and-So, a novelist, can 'wither
fashionable folly' and that 'a painful incident'
to one shopkeeper has 'thrown a gloom ' over a
whole market-town, and so on. Now-a-days
every third phrase is of this character; a
starling's note. Once, it appears, there was an age
of gold, and then came one of iron, and then of
brass. All these are gone, and the age of
'jargon' has succeeded."

She sighed, and Sampson took a "tremendous
header" off the sea-side novel into the sea of
fiction. He rechristened that joyous art Feckshin,
and lashed its living professors. "You devour
their three volumes greedily," said he, "but after
your meal you feel as empty as a drrum; there
is no leading idea in 'um ; now, there always is
in Molière: and he comprehended the midicine
of his age. But what fundamental truth d'our
novelists iver convey? All they can do is pile
incidents. Their customers dictate th' article;
unideaed melodrams for unideaed girls. The
writers and their feckshins belong to one species,
and that's 'the non-vertebrated animals;' and
their midicine is Bosh; why they bleed still
for falls and fevers; and niver mention vital
chronometry. Then they don't look straight at
Nature, but see with their ears, and repeat one
another twelve deep. Now, listen me! there are
the cracters for an 'ideaed feckshin' in Barkington,
and I'd write it, too, only I haven't time."

At this, Julia, forgetting her resolution, broke
out, "Romantic characters in Barkington?
Who? who?"

"Who should they be, but my pashints? Ay,
ye may lauch, Miss Julee, but wait till ye see
them." He was then seized with a fit of candour,
and admitted that some, even of his pashints,
were colourless; indeed, not to mince the matter,
six or seven of that sacred band were nullity in
person. "I can compare the beggars to
nothing," said he, "but the globules of the
Do-Nothings; dee— d insipid, and nothing in 'em.
But the others make up. Man alive, I've got 'a
rosy checked miser,' and an 'ill-used attorney,'
and an 'honest Screw,' he is a gardener, with a
hid like a cart-horse."

"Mamma! mamma! that is Mr. Maxley,"
cried Julia, clapping her hands, and thawing in
her own despite.

"Then there's my virgin martyr, and my
puppy; they are brother and sister; and there's
their father, but he is an impenetrable dog—
won't unbosom. Howiver, he sairves to draw
chicks for the other two, and so keep em goen.
By-the-by, you know my puppy."

"We have not that honour. Do we know Dr.
Sampson's puppy, love?" inquired Mrs. Dodd,
rather languidly.

"Mamma! — I— I— know no one of that
name."

"Don't tell me! Why it was he sent me
here: told me where you lived, and I was to
make haste, for Miss Dodd was very ill: it is
young Hardie, the banker's son, ye know."

Mrs. Dodd said, good humouredly, but with a
very slight touch of irony, that really they were
very much flattered by the interest Mr. Alfred
Hardie had shown; especially as her daughter had
never exchanged ten words with him. Julia
coloured at this statement, the accuracy of which
she had good reason to doubt; and the poor
girl felt as if an icicle passed swiftly along her
back. And then, for the first time in her life, she
thought her mother hardly gracious; and she
wanted to say she was obliged to Mr. Alfred
Hardie, but dared not, and despised herself for
not daring. Her composure was further attacked
by Mrs. Dodd looking full at her, and saying,
interrogatively, "I wonder how that young gentleman
could know about your being ill?"

At this Julia eyed her plate very attentively,
and murmured, "I believe it is all over the town:
and seriously too, so Mrs. Maxley says: for she
tells me that, in Barkington, if more than one
doctor is sent for, that bodes ill for the patient.'

"Deevelich ill," cried Sampson, heartily:

      "For two physicians, like a pair of oars,
      Conduck him faster to the Styjjin shores."*
                              * Garth.

Julia looked him in the face, and coldly
ignored this perversion of Mrs. Maxley's meaning;
and Mrs. Dodd returned pertinaciously to the
previous topic. "Mr. Alfred Hardie interests
me: he was good to Edward. I am curious to
know why you call him a puppy?"

"Only because he is one, ma'am. And that is
no reason at all with 'the Six.' He is a juveneel
pidant, and a puppy, and contradicts ivery new
truth, bekase it isn't in Aristotle and th' Eton
Grammar; and he's such a chatterbox, ye can't get
in a word idgeways; and he and his sister—that's
my virgin martyr — are a farce. He keeps sneerin
at her relijjin, and that puts her in such a rage, she
thritens 't' intercede for him at the Throne.'"

"Jargon," sighed Mrs. Dodd, and just shrugged
her lovely shoulders. "We breathe it — we float
in an atmosphere of it. My love?" And she
floated out of the room, and Julia floated after.

"You look flushed, love," was Mrs. Dodd's
first word in the drawing-room. "Lie on the
sofa a minute, and compose yourself."

Sampson made grog and sipped it, meditating
on the gullibility of man in matters medical.
This favourite speculation detained him late, and
almost his first word on entering the drawing-
room was, "Good night, little girl."

Julia coloured at this broad hint, drew herself
up, and lighted a bed-candle. She went to Mrs.
Dodd, kissed her, and whispered in her ear, "I
hate him!" and, as she retired, her whole elegant
person launched ladylike defiance; under which
brave exterior no little uneasiness was hidden.