"Oh, my dear father! I wouldn't disturb you on any account," said I, rather alarmed at the extent of my worthy parent's liberality in the cause, and fearing it might end in the offer of the whole family to pack themselves in the attics, and leave me a first floor to myself--calculating, too, the amount of hard reading commensurate with such imposing preparations. "What would become of the justice business of the parish, sir, if we shut up your tribunal? I don't suppose my mother would like to have the constables and the illegitimates introduced either into the drawing-room or the kitchen," (this was, as I meant it to be, a poser; if Mr Hawthorne senior had a hobby, it was his magisterial authority.) "The fact is, that at home, up-stairs or down-stairs, I couldn't read. I should have not only my own idleness, but the various idlenesses of the whole family combined, to fight against. My sisters would be knocking at the door every half hour, if only to ask how I was getting on: Bob would tease me to come out skating, and Charles would start me perpetually after wild-ducks or woodcocks. And you yourself, sir, if I am not much mistaken, would think it odd if I didn't take a ride with you as usual after breakfast. Then one can't be expected to crawl about one's books by candlelight on a winter's morning; and after a six o'clock dinner who can read? After tea you know, sir, my mother always likes a rubber when I'm at home; and if you are going to have those girls, Jane and Sophy, down this Christmas"---- "Ah! well--I see, Frank; I'm afraid it's a hopeless case. Perhaps you had better stay up at Oxford after all; you won't have much to disturb you there, I suppose. If you don't get moped to death, I certainly don't see what's to hinder your reading. You don't feel inclined to try North Wales in the winter, I suppose, eh?" "No, sir," said I, swallowing a last glass of Madeira at a gulp, and rising, to cut short a conversation which was beginning to take rather an awkward turn--"No, sir, not exactly." "Why, I don't know, Frank: why not? you'd find the climate cooler, you know," persevered the governor, as he followed me into the drawing-room.