“Oh, you misunderstand me!” exclaimed Miss Sowersoft; “I did not make any allusions to you in particular. Oh, no! I have had very many most excellent offers, and could have them now for that matter; but then, you see, I was only just saying, as the thought came across my mind, that there is something to be said against being married, and something against keeping single. I remember the time when I could not bear the very thoughts of a man about me; but, somehow, as one gets older we see so much more of the world, and one's ideas change almost as much as one's bodies; really, I am as different as another woman to what I once was. Somehow, I don't know how, but so it happens--Ah!” shrieked Miss Sowersoft, interrupting herself in the demonstration of this very metaphysical and abstruse point in her discourse, “take hold of me, dear,--take hold of me! I've trod on a toad, I believe!” At the same time she threw her arms up to Mr. Palethorpe for protection; and, very accidentally, of course, they chanced to alight round that worthy's neck. A round dozen of rough-bearded kisses, which even he, stoic as he was, could not refrain from bestowing upon her, in order to revive and restore her spirits, smacked loudly on the dusky air, and set poor little Colin a-laughing in spite of himself. “Who the deuce is that!” earnestly whispered the farming-man. “There's somebody under the brook bank!” and, as he instantly disengaged Miss Sowersoft from his arms, he rushed round the holly-bushes, and caught fast hold of Colin, just as that unlucky lad was making a speedy retreat across the rivulet into the opposite orchard. “What! it is you, you young divel, is it?” exclaimed he in a fury, as he dragged the boy up the sloping bank, and bestowed upon him sundry kicks, scarcely inferior to those of a vicious horse, with his heavy, clench-nailed, quarter-boots. “You 're listening after your meesis, now, are you? Dang your meddling carcass! I 'll stop your ears for you!” And bang went his ponderous fist on Colin's organs of Secretiveness and Acquisitiveness, until his head sung again throughout, like a seething caldron. “That's right!” cried Miss Sowersoft; “make him feel; drag him up; my face burns with shame at him; I'm as hot as a scarlet-fever, I am--a young scoundrel!” And Colin was pulled up on to the level of the garden, more like a half-killed rat than a half-grown human being. “We'll know how this is, meesis,” said Mr. Palethorpe, when he had fairly landed his cargo. “I 'll see to the bottom of it before he goes into th' house. He sha'n't have a chance of being backed up in his impudence as he was t'other night.” “Take him into the thrashing-barn,” advised Miss Sowersoft, “and we can have him there in private.” Colin now found breath to put in a protest against the bill of indictment which they were preferring against him. “I was not listening,” said he; “I was only writing a letter to my mother, I 'm sure!”