MISS JEMIMA, half pettishly, half coaxingly.--"Why is he interesting? I scarcely ever looked at him; they say he smokes, and never eats. Ugly, too!" MRS DALE.--"Ugly--no. A fine head--very like Dante's--but what is beauty?" MISS JEMIMA.--"Very true; what is it indeed? Yes, as you say, I think there is something interesting about him; he looks melancholy, but that may be because he is poor." MRS DALE.--"It is astonishing how little one feels poverty when one loves. Charles and I were very poor once--before the Squire----." Mrs Dale paused, looked towards the Squire, and murmured a blessing, the warmth of which brought tears into her eyes. "Yes," she added, after a pause, "we were very poor, but we were happy even then, more thanks to Charles than to me," and tears from a new source again dimmed those quick lively eyes, as the little woman gazed fondly on her husband, whose brows were knit into a black frown over a bad hand. MISS JEMIMA.--"It is only those horrid men who think of money as a source of happiness. I should be the last person to esteem a gentleman less because he was poor." MRS DALE.--"I wonder the Squire does not ask Signor Riccabocca here more often. Such an acquisition we find him!" The Squire's voice from the card table.--"Whom ought I to ask more often, Mrs Dale?" Parson's voice impatiently.--"Come--come--come, Squire: play to my queen of diamonds--do!" SQUIRE.--"There, I trump it--pick up the trick, Mrs H." PARSON.--"Stop! stop! trump my diamond?" The Captain, solemnly.--"Trick turned--play on, Squire." SQUIRE.--"The king of diamonds." MRS HAZELDEAN.--"Lord! Hazeldean--why, that's the most barefaced revoke--ha--ha--ha! trump the queen of diamonds and play out the king! well I never--ha--ha--ha!" CAPTAIN BARNABAS, in tenor.--"Ha, ha, ha!" SQUIRE.--"And so I have, bless my soul--ho, ho, ho!" CAPTAIN BARNABAS, in bass.--"Ho--ho--ho." Parson's voice raised, but drowned by the laughter of his adversaries and the firm clear tone of Captain Barnabas:--"Three to our score!--game!" SQUIRE, wiping his eyes.--"No help for it, Harry--deal for me! Whom ought I to ask, Mrs Dale? (waxing angry.) First time I ever heard the hospitality of Hazeldean called in question!" MRS DALE.--"My dear sir, I beg a thousand pardons, but listeners--you know the proverb." SQUIRE, growling like a bear.--"I hear nothing but proverbs ever since we have had that Mounseer among us. Please to speak plainly, marm." MRS DALE, sliding into a little temper at being thus roughly accosted.--"It was of Mounseer, as you call him, that I spoke, Mr Hazeldean." SQUIRE.--"What! Rickeybockey?" MRS DALE, attempting the pure Italian accentuation.--"Signor Riccabocca." PARSON, slapping his cards on the table in despair.--"Are we playing at whist, or are we not?"