old aunt has died, and left the Governor some tin, and he’s breaking his heart to buy back the farm, but cotton spinner refuses to sell. How at the last Hunt Ball, my eldest sister, came out--she is very pretty, and a nice, taking sort of girl in society--and said cotton spinner came, saw, and was conquered! so much so, that having offered serious intentions ever since, he has ended by offering himself. Thereupon arose a difference of opinion between Alice and the Governor--Alice pleading that she didn’t love cotton spinner one bit, and didn’t expect she ever should do so, and Governor declaring that it was all sentimental bosh, and that if she married the man, as much love as it was at all proper for a young lady to feel, would come afterwards. At last, they made a compromise--Alice was to consent to see more of Mr. Crane, and do her best to like him, in which case, said Crane would allow her to postpone her decision till a future period: to this Alice was fain to consent, and now the suitor is coming to the Grange, on approval, and the Governor’s asked a party of people to meet him.” “And how do you stand affected towards the proposed alliance?” inquired Coverdale, lifting the Skye terrier into his lap by the nape of its neck, and then curling it up like a fried whiting. “Not over favourably,” returned Hazlehurst, “which, by the way, is very disinterested of me; for if the affair comes off, and the Governor buys his farm back again--which of course is what he is looking to--he promises to settle the residue of the aunt’s legacy upon me, by which I should be some £200 a-year the better; but it would not be a match to please me. I’m very fond of Alice; she is a dear good girl as ever lived, and I don’t admire the cotton spinner: in the first place, he’s nearly, or quite forty, while she was nineteen last term; in the second place, he’s a slow coach, good-natured enough, and all that, but nothing in him.” “No soul”--suggested Harry. “Not enough to animate a kitten, I should imagine,” was the reply;--“not that the man’s a fool--indeed, in his own line he is said to be clever. He invented some dodge to simplify his machinery, by which he nearly doubled his fortune.” “_That_ was decidedly clever”--remarked Harry, busily engaged in dressing the “Skye” in a muslin “anti-macassar,” placed clean upon the sofa that morning. “To come to the point, however,” continued Hazlehurst--“I want you to see the man, and try and find out what he’s made of.” “Fool’s-flesh probably”--suggested Coverdale _sotto voce_. “I wish you would try and be serious for five minutes,” returned Hazlehurst testily; “nothing is more provoking than small attempts at wit, when one wants a man to give his attention sensibly to that which one is saying.” “I stand, or more properly sit, corrected: so continue, most sapient and surly brother!”--was the mocking answer.