appreciated the affectionate fuss Alice made about him all the same. Harry! you blind, stupid Harry!--as if her little finger, bless it, were not worth all the horse-flesh that ever was foaled, from Bucephalus, down to the winner of the last Derby. The next morning was a very fine one. Alice and Harry made their appearance in the breakfast parlour about nine o’clock; each was a little out of sorts. Alice, not having been able to get any air or exercise on the previous day, had waked with a headache, which Harry continually forgetting, would leave the door of his dressing-room open, and attire himself to the tune of “A hunting we will go.” Then a new morning gown, on which Miss Flippery, the dressmaker at H--------, had staked her credit, did not fit, and in turning round to look at the set of the back, Alice trod on the skirt, and tore it out of the “gathers”--whatever they may be; and as women seldom swear, and the evil was scarcely serious enough to cry over, poor little Mrs. Coverdale was unable to vent her annoyance, and brought it down to breakfast with her accordingly. Harry, on the other hand, conscious that he was about to commit an act of injustice, on which (although he repented of it sufficiently to feel very uncomfortable) he was still determined, tried to keep up his courage by affecting a degree of hilarity which caused him to make bad jokes about every subject mentioned, and to evince such a total want of sympathy with his wife’s headache and consequent depression of spirits, that Alice for the first time in her life considered him tiresome and in the way, and felt inclined to say sharp things to him and snub him. After a longish pause, interrupted only when, on two occasions, Harry was pulled up for whistling, and a third time for beating the devil’s tattoo on the chimney-piece, Alice began, “Really Wilkins has taken to burning the toast so black, it is impossible to eat it. I wish you would speak to him about it, Harry.” “Certainly, my love,” was the cheerful reply; “what shall I say to him? That although I approve of his blacking my boots, I disapprove of his blacking my toast, and that I shall thank him to do it brown in future?” “If you like to risk the chance, which is almost a certainty, that the man will misunderstand you, for the sake of making a stupid slang pun, I advise you to do so,” was the captious reply. “Phew!” whistled Harry; “how solemn, and sensible, and serious we’ve grown all of a sudden! I beg to inform you, Mrs. Coverdale that I expect my wife to admire my puns, if nobody else does.”