unbroken life of home and your first youth—the
pet, the confidant, the twin cherry, the double
life, the second self—all, in short, that one
human soul could be to another. Your nose
has ruled a straight line in this direction all your
life as yet, and you never looked for a deviation.
And would never have had one, you say in your
wrath, if brother Charley had not met with that
fascinating little puss of his, down in Northamptonshire
where he went by such mere chance to
pay a Christmas visit; or if sister Emmy had
not fallen in love with that handsome scamp of
a barrister, with whiskers bigger than his briefs,
and a power of persuasion far beyond his powers
of law, to whom Mrs. Scott introduced her
(interfering old fool!) at Chiswick. And then what
became of your noses, you poor betrayed
fraternals?

Marriage, indeed, often puts noses out of joint;
not only the one favourite's, but all sorts of noses
belonging to all sorts of people. When my
friend Wellbeloved married, he had a whole row
of them, very badly dislocated, as the ornaments
round his wedding-cake. Spiritually treated,
that is; emblemised in orange flowers and silver
Cupids, but noses out of joint in essence and
in dwelling spirit, whatever they were in seeming.
His sister's was the biggest, perhaps—the
youngest sister, with whom he had always been
paired ever since their nursery days; but there
was also her little son's, his only nephew,
assigned his heir from his birth by far-seeing
mamma naturally transferring her claim on dear
Wellbeloved to young master, who could
continue it. And then there was his friend Harry's,
and Harry's wife's—a nearer friend still, if report
was true of all that had been in the times before
Harry married, and when Mrs. Harry had to
choose between love and esteem, Harry and
Wellbeloved, and chose the former, not repenting.
And there was the pet niece's; a pretty
little round Roxalana nose, which had always
stood high in his good graces, in fact, higher
than any other save his sister's, and a good
many centigrades above his nephew's, though,
like a prudent man able to bridle an unruly
member, he concealed that fact, not wishing to
have caps pulled before his face, and in his quiet
way playing off one against the other, and keeping
up the ball with all. (Be it remembered
that all this time Wellbeloved was rich, of
middle age, of easy temper, and unmarried.)
When he saw Miss Merrybird, she put their
respective noses out of joint in half an hour.
A bright, cheery, blue-eyed, and golden-haired
little bird as it was, too! who hopped on to the
perch held out for her without the smallest
hesitation, and sat there as contentedly as if she
had been born on it and knew no other. And
when her pretty rosy beak had destroyed the
symmetry of all the rest, Wellbeloved found to
his cost how many people had loved him for
what they could get out of him, and how few
for himself independent of their own gain. He
did not break his heart at the discovery, though
he opened his eyes and wondered in his soul.
With little Miss Merrybird perched on his
finger, or nestling against his shoulder, he was
perfectly indifferent to everything else, and
though lie would willingly have dealt in soothing
plaisters—and did, largely, plaisters of a fine ripe
golden colour and brilliant metallic shine—yet,
as he could not undo his real offence and make
Mrs. Wellbeloved Miss Merrybird again, he
could not build up broken bridges to the angle
of the past, and so never got completely
forgiven.

This instance, however, is of the graver
manner of dislocation, affecting not only the
pleasure but the very conditions and continuance
of lives. For Wellbeloved's favourite
sister, not able to assign young master a certain
heirship on this side the united escutcheon, went
down to Leicestershire, to live within the range
of old Foxtail's vision: Foxtail being her
deceased husband's uncle, also unmarried, past
middle age, and childless: hoping that her
powers of fascination, which were not small,
might consolidate themselves into a fat codicil
in this quarter. Which they did; and so firmly,
that young master came into the possession of
Foxtail Hall when the old man died, learnt the
noble art of hunting, and broke his poor young
neck one day before it had well settled itself
into its manly stock. And the pet niece,
withdrawn from undesirable society by her enraged
parent—Wellbeloved's eldest sister, who had a
spirit, and was proud of it—fell into the hands
of Signor Grazie, professor of many arts at
Milan, and became that most miserable of all
created things, an expatriated British female,
with her heart in the English lanes, a wife with
a husband of a strange religion, friends of a
foreign tongue, and children more their Italian
grandmamma's than her own. All because of
Miss Merrybird and her golden ringlets, and
Uncle Wellbeloved's soft big heart.

Friends often put out otlier friends' noses.
There was that affair of the Blanks with my
Lord and Lady Fivestars, that I happened to
know of, having seen and studied it from the
beginning to the end, attentively. The Blanks
had been greatly patronised by my Lord and
Lady Fivestars—kind people in their way, and
generous, but a little fitty, and not a little
inconstant. However, the Blanks' reign was a
bright one while it lasted, and they had no
cause to complain. Mr. Blank was an indifferent
portrait painter, and Lady Fivestars used
to introduce him to all her friends as the modern
Raphael; and Mrs. Blank was an authoress, and
Lord Fivestars once crowned her as Corinna in
the conservatory; and on their side the Blanks
were fluttered and flattered out of all the little
common sense they ever possessed—which was
not much—and if they did not walk on their
heads it was not for want of despising their
feet. In the end they came out of their flutter,
and then they drifted into that most dangerous
of all stagnations—security. They forgot to be
subservient; they diminished the profundity of
their kowtows; they laid aside the pretty alphabet,
all flowers and flourishes, with which they
had hitherto spelt out their adoration of my