Of course, if you do not go, there is one gentleman the less to escort the ladies, who, not having so much to attend to at home, or having a greater partiality for the pastime, are always in a great majority over the gentlemen at these parties. And if you should happen to be a marrying man, and a tolerably eligible match, the loss is, of course, so much the greater. This reason evidently affects principally marriageable young ladies, and those who are interested in getting them off their hands; but there is another reason which appeals to the hearts and feelings of everybody. It is this:—In these parties the ladies provide the eatables, and the gentlemen bring the drinkables, and club together to pay the costs of conveyance and other miscellaneous charges. Now, if one gentleman be subtracted from the total number going—a very small number generally, for reasons which will now be thoroughly understood—it follows that the remainder will necessarily have to pay more per head for conveyance, &c., and will also have to provide more each in the way of wine, spirit, bottled ale, and other liquids necessary to the success of pic-nics; or else that each individual will have less to drink. Human nature revolts at such an alternative; and we find it intelligible enough, that to refuse to go to a pic-nic at Mudford, should be considered by those who do go to be adding injury to insult. But there was a reason greater even than this for the falling off of the New Doctor in the estimation of the young ladies, until even the Miss Johnsons and the Miss MacClinkers, who had thrown themselves at his head in every way which was open to them when he first came, had now nothing too bad to say of him. And that was, that he dared—he actually dared—how shall I tell it!—he dared to fall in love with a young lady who was a stranger and sojourner in the place, while there were so many native virgins ready and willing to be fallen in love with! Need I, after this, describe the bitterness with which he was spoken of by all the female portion of Mudford society! It was really most audacious conduct! To think that neither the Miss Johnsons, nor the Miss MacClinkers, nor the Misses Ferris, nor the Miss Skinners, nor any among the marriageable young ladies of Mudford, would suit his taste, and that he must pitch upon that little Laura Playfair from London, who had now come down on her second visit to her cousins, the Skinners! And yet, highly as I disapprove of the Doctor’s behaviour, I cannot help saying that Miss Playfair was a very nice and very superior girl, and that, had I been a young man myself, I should——. But never mind; I won’t have the bad taste to draw comparisons on such subjects, but will only go on to say that Laura had not been two days in the place before the wretch Smith saw her, and procured an introduction to her and to the three Miss Skinners at the same time. Those three sisters immediately put their innocent