"The report is true, then, that you have been harpooned by the Bowsends? Poor fellow! I am sorry for you. Just tell me what you mean to do with the dressed-up doll when you get her? A young lady who has not enough patience even to read her novels from beginning to end, and who, before she was twelve years old, had Tom Moore and Byron, _Don Juan_ perhaps excepted, by heart. A damsel who has geography and the globes, astronomy and Cuvier, Raphael's cartoons and Rossini's operas, at her finger-ends; but who, as true as I am alive, does not know whether a mutton chop is cut off a pig or a cow--who would boil tea and cauliflowers in the same manner, and has some vague idea that eggs are the principal ingredient in a gooseberry pie." "I want her for my wife, not for my cook," retorted I, rather nettled. "Who does not know," continued Richards, "whether dirty linen ought to be boiled or baked." "But she sings like St Cecilia, plays divinely, and dances like a fairy." "Yes, all that will do you a deal of good. I know the family; both father and mother are the most contemptible people breathing." "Stop there!" cried I; "they are not one iota better or worse than their neighbours." "You are right." "Well, then, leave them in peace. I have promised to drink tea there at six o'clock. If you will come, I will take you with me." "Know then already, man. I will go, on one condition; that you leave New York with me in three days." "If my marriage is not settled," replied I. "D----d fool!" muttered Richards between his teeth. Six o'clock struck as we entered the drawing-room of my future mother-in-law. The good lady almost frightened me as I went in, by her very extraordinary appearance in a tremendous grey gauze turban, fire-new, just arrived by the Henri Quatre packet-ship from Havre, and that gave her exactly the look of one of our Mississippi night-owls. Richards seemed a little startled; and Moreland, who was already there, could not take his eyes off this remarkable head-dress. Miss Margaret was costumed in pale green silk, her hair flattened upon each side of her forehead _a la Marguerite_, (see the _Journal des Modes,_) and looking like Jephtha's daughter, pale and resigned, but rather more lackadaisical, with a sort of "though-absent-not-forgot" look about her, inexpressibly sentimental and interesting. The contrast was certainly rather strong between old Moreland, who sat there, red-faced, thickset, and clumsy, and the airy slender Staunton, who, for fear of spoiling his figure, lived upon oysters and macaroon, and drank water with a rose leaf in it. I had brought the languishing beauty above described, Scott's _Tales of my Grandfather_, which had just appeared. "Ah! Walter Scott!" exclaimed she, in her pretty melting tones. Then, after a moment's pause, "The vulgar man has not a word to say for himself;" said she to me, in a low tone.