“Sing out and tell him it is not like the sculls. We must fight for the lead at starting, and hold it with his eyelids when he has got it.” The adherent bawled this at Edward, and Edward's reply came ringing back in a clear, cheerful voice, “We mean to try all we know.” “What is the odds?” inquired the invalid faintly. “Even on London; two to one against Cambridge; three to one against us.” “Take all my tin and lay it on,” sighed the sufferer. “Fork it out, then. Hallo! eighteen pounds? Fancy having eighteen pounds at the end of term. I'll get the odds up at the bridge directly. Here's a lady offering you her smelling-bottle.” Hardie rose and turned round, and sure enough there were two ladies seated in their carriage at some distance, one of whom was holding him out three pretty little things enough, a little smile, a little blush, and a little cut-glass bottle with a gold cork. The last panegyric on Edward had turned the scale. Hardie went slowly up to the side of the carriage, and took off his hat to them with a half-bewildered air. Now that he was so near, his face showed very pale; the more so that his neck was a good deal tanned; his eyelids were rather swollen, and his young eyes troubled and almost filmy with the pain. The ladies saw, and their gentle bosoms were touched: they had heard of him as a victorious young Apollo trampling on all difficulties of mind and body; and they saw him wan, and worn, with feminine suffering: the contrast made him doubly interesting. Arrived at the side of the carriage, he almost started at Julia's beauty. It was sun-like, and so were her two lovely earnest eyes, beaming soft pity on him with an eloquence he had never seen in human eyes before; for Julia's were mirrors of herself; they did nothing by halves. He looked at her and her mother, and blushed, and stood irresolute, awaiting their commands. This sudden contrast to his petulance with his own sex paved the way. “You have a sad headache, sir,” said Mrs. Dodd; “oblige me by trying my salts.” He thanked her in a low voice. “And, mamma,” inquired Julia, “ought he to sit in the sun?” “Certainly not. You had better sit there, sir, and profit by our shade and our parasols.” “Yes, mamma, but you know the real place where he ought to be is Bed.” “Oh, pray don't say that,” implored the patient. But Julia continued, with unabated severity, “And that is where he would go this minute, if I was his mamma.” “Instead of his junior, and a stranger,” said Mrs. Dodd, somewhat coldly, dwelling with a very slight monitory emphasis on the “stranger.” Julia said nothing, but drew in perceptibly, and was dead silent ever after.