The carriage was off by this time, and open as it was, they had no fear of old coachey hearing, for it took a loud hail to reach him. “Take the honour of a Kettledrum,” cried Bailey, smiting his bosom, “that the subject has not even been broached between my wiser part and myself. Ladies, in this pure aerial—no, I mean ethereal—air, with the shades of night around us, and the breezes wafting, would an exceedingly choice and delicately aromatic cigar——” “Oh, I should so like it, Bailey; and perhaps we shall have the nightingales.” “I fear we must not think of it,” interposed Mrs. Corklemore, gently; “my dress is of a fabric quite newly introduced, very beautiful, but (like myself) too retentive of impressions. If Mr. Kettledrum smokes, I shall have to throw it away.” “There goes the cigar instead,” cried Bailey; “the paramount rights of ladies ever have been, and ever shall be, sacred with Bailey Kettledrum.” But Mrs. Kettledrum was so vexed that she jumped up, as if to watch the cigar spinning into the darkness, and contrived with sisterly accuracy to throw all her weight upon a certain portion of a certain lovely foot, whereupon there ensued the neatest little passes, into which we need not enter. Enough that Mrs. Corklemore, having higher intellectual gifts, “won,” in the language of the ring, “both events”—first tear, and first hysterical symptom. “Come,” cried Mr. Kettledrum, at the very first opportunity, to wit, when both were crying; “we all know what sisters are: how they mingle the—the sweetness of their affection with a certain—ah, yes—a piquancy of expression, most pleasant, most improving, because so highly conducive to self–examination!” Here he stood up, having made a hit, worthy of the House of Commons. “All these little breezes, ladies, may be called the trade–winds of affection. They blow from pole to pole.” “The trade–winds never do that,” said Georgie. “They pass us by as the idle wind, when the clouds are like a whale, ladies, having overcome us for a moment, like a summer dream. Hark to that thrush, sitting perhaps on his eggs”—”Oh, Oh!” from the gallery of nature—”can there be, I pause for a reply, anything but harmony, where the voices of the night pervade, and the music of the spheres?” “You—you do speak so splendidly, dear,” sobbed Mrs. Kettledrum from the corner; “but it is a nasty, wicked, cruel story, about dear papa saying that of me, and he in his grave, poor dear, quite unable to vindicate himself. I have always thought it so unchristian to malign the dead!” “Whatʼs that?” cried Georgie, starting up, in fear and hot earnest; “you are chattering so, you hear nothing.” A horse dashed by them at full gallop, with his rider on his neck, shouting and yelling, and clinging and lashing.