“Show you the farm to-morrow, my boy, you’ll be delighted with my pigs--Neapolitans every hair of ’em. What? no man alive shall presume to tell me they’re not the best breed! And I’ll tell you what, Charlie, I’ve secured the handsomest short-horned bull in this country. Two hundred, you dog!--dirt cheap--and if you’re fond of stock you’ll be charmed with him. Poultry too--real Cochin Chinese--got three prizes at the last show; average height two feet seven inches--rare beauties. Hens and chickens in knee-breeches, and a cock in trunk-hose!” With which conclusion the chuckling old warrior permitted Charlie to wheedle him off into the drawing-room, whither they entered to find the ladies, as usual, absorbed in worsted work and sunk in solemn silence. Pleasantly the evenings always passed at Newton-Hollows even with a small party like the present. Music, cards, cockamaroo, and the eternal racing game, of course, which gives gentle woman an insight into the two fiercest pleasures of the other sex--horse-racing and gambling--and introduces into the drawing-room the slang and confusion of the betting-ring and the hazard-table, served to while away the time. And though the General was even more diffuse than was his wont in personal recollections and autobiography, Blanche scarcely listened, so absorbed was she in her delight at having got Cousin Charlie back again, whilst that young gentleman and Mary Delaval were progressing rapidly in each other’s good opinion, and exclaiming, in their respective minds, “What an agreeable person! and so _different from what I expected_!”