Love prompts a thousand absurdities; but never in all my experience of life could I conceive a girl calling the object of her affection “a nice young man.” The phrase smote me as the death-knell of Curling’s hopes, if he had any. “I don’t very much care about nice young men,” I answered. “I have been bred in a land of piquant sauces and thickly peppered dishes, and like things well flavoured. A nice person is a boiled character which you have to discuss without salt.” “I know what you mean,” she exclaimed gaily. “Mr. Meek, our doctor here, is a boiled character, full of what papa calls negative excellence, which means thorough insipidity.” I was much gratified to find her capable of appreciating my jokes. It _did_ seem impossible that such demure, sweet, intelligent eyes as hers should be the windows of a sluggish, dull nature. I was resolved to try her a little more on the subject of the cashier. “Your father gave me to understand that Mr. Curling was good-looking. How people differ in their tastes? Now I think Mr. Curling anything but good looking.” “He is very thin.” “Very; one thing I noticed, the cockneyfication of his person by a big ring on his first finger. These fellows ought to go abroad now and then. ‘Home keeping youths have ever homely wits.’” “But don’t you know what another poet says? ‘What learn our youth abroad but to refine The homely vices of their native land? Give me an honest, home-spun country clown Of our own growth; his dullness is but plain, But their’s embroidered; they are sent out fools But come back fops!’” “God bless me!” said I uncomfortably; “what a memory you have! Who wrote that rubbish?” “I forget. It was a school exercise, and that is how I happen to know it.” “I hope you have no more pat quotations at your finger ends.” “No. What other poetry I know is all sentimental.” “Ah!” I exclaimed, “I am very fond of sentimental poetry--Moore’s for instance.” “I wonder, with your refined taste, that you could ever tolerate the notion of settling into a banker’s clerk.” Was she ironical? Was she sarcastic? Her eyes were all innocence; her face all candour. “It is not the choice of my will, but of my poverty. Nature made me a gentleman, but forgot to endow me. Therefore there is nothing for me to do, but to forget her good intentions and learn book-keeping.” Here she looked at the clock, and as she did so her mamma came rustling and swelling in, decked out in a fine bonnet, new gloves, and a stiff blue silk gown. “Haven’t you been to see the grounds, Charlie?” she asked. “I have been very well entertained,” I replied with a smile at Conny. “There’s the carriage!” exclaimed my cousin, and a barouche with two horses, driven by my friend James in silver livery, swept along the avenue and stopped at the door. “We have lost our footman,” said my aunt, apologetically, as we passed out, “but I hope to replace him next week.” I begged her not to mention it; we got in, and off we went.