"It is very well for you, who looked on, to call it a little affair," rather sharply interrupted Mr. Trim, "but I never got such a drubbing." Kate laughed gaily. Mr. Smalley, finding he had unconsciously been sarcastic, looked confounded, and tried to get out of it by suddenly finding out that when Miss O'Reilly laughed she was very like her brother. But Mr. Trim was on him directly. He, as every one knew, was as blind as a bat; but how did it happen that Smalley, who wore glasses, and pretended to have weak eyes, could yet see well enough to discover likenesses? He put the question with an air of injured candour. Mr. Smalley protested that his eyes were weak; but Mr. Trim proved to him so clearly that he was physically and mentally as sharp-eyed as a lynx, that his friend gave in, a convicted impostor, and took refuge in the Dorsetshire curacy to which he was proceeding, and of which he gave an account that might have answered for a bishopric. But thither too, Mr. Trim pursued him, and broadly hinted at the selfishness of some people, who could think of nothing but that which concerned them. Upon which Mr. Smalley, looking at Kate, declared in self-defence that it was not through indifference, but from a sense of discretion, he had not inquired in what branch of literature, science, or art, her brother was now distinguishing himself. Miss O'Reilly reddened, and looked indignantly at Mr. Trim, who, with his eyes shut and his hands on his knees, had suddenly dropped into a doze by the fire-side. Then she drew up her slender figure, and said stiffly-- "My brother is a clerk, Sir." Mr. Smalley looked at her with mute and incredulous surprise. "Don't you remember I told you?" observed Mr. Trim, wakening up: "we were turning the corner of Oxford-street." Mr. Smalley remembered turning the corner of Oxford-street, but no more. "Yes, yes," confidently resumed Mr. Trim, "we were turning the corner of Oxford-street, when I said to you, 'Is it not a shame a scholar, a genius like O'Reilly, should be perched up on a high stool in a dirty hole of an office--'" "It was his own choice," interrupted Kate, and she began speaking of the weather. Five struck; I stole out of the room, went to the garden, and opening the door, stood on the threshold to watch for Cornelius. I soon saw him, and ran out to meet him. "Mr. Trim is come," I said. "Is he?" was the careless reply. "And Mr. Smalley, too."