“O mamma,” said Blanche, “such a friend of Charlie’s--I’m sure we ought to like him; and I’m sure he likes _us_; what a way he came down through that horrid shingle to help you out of the boat; and did you see, mamma, what nice thin boots he had on? I think I should like him very much if we knew him better. Not so much as ‘Cousin Charlie,’” added the young girl, reflectively, “or dear darling Hairblower. How shocking it was when his partner went down, mamma. Did you hear that story? But I am sure Mr. Hardingstone is very good-natured.” “That reminds me, my dear,” said Mrs. Kettering, who was getting rather flushed towards the end of the chicken; “I do hope that boy has not gone to bathe: I am always afraid about water. Blanche, hand me the sherry; and, my dear, I must order some bottled porter for _you_--you are very pale in this hot weather; but I am always fidgety about Charlie when he is bathing.” From the conversation recorded above, we may gather that Mrs. Kettering, who, as we have said, was inclined to be nervous, was rapidly becoming so upon one or two important points. In the first place, with all a mother’s pride in her daughter’s beauty, she could not be blind to the general admiration excited thereby, nor could she divest herself of certain misgivings that Blanche would not long remain to be the solace of her widowhood, but that, to use her own expression, she was “sure to be _snapped up_ before she was old enough to know her own mind.” The consequence was, that Mrs. Kettering much mistrusted all her male acquaintance under the age of old-fellow-hood--a period of life which, in these days of “wonderfully young-looking men,” seems indefinitely postponed; and regarded every well-dressed, well-whiskered biped as a possible subverter of her schemes, and a probable rival to “Cousin Charlie”; she kept him at bay, accordingly, with a coldness and reserve quite foreign to her own cordial and demonstrative nature. Frank Hardingstone she could not dislike, do what she would. And we are bound to confess that she was less guarded in her encouragement of that gentleman than of any other male visitor who appeared in the afternoons at No. 9, to leave a small bit of glazed paste-board, with an inward thanksgiving for his escape from a morning visit, or to utter incontrovertible platitudes while he smoothed his hat on his coat-sleeve, and glanced ever and anon at the clock on the chimney-piece, for the earliest moment at which, with common decency, he might take his departure.