"You do me injustice, Miss Horsingham; indeed you do," broke out the Squire in a white heat and with a deprecating glance at me. "I assure you I sent over a very fine cutting, with a pot and everything, directions for matting it in winter and transplanting after a year. If you never got it I'll discharge my gardener; I will, upon my word." "I have got such a Cochin China to show you," persisted his tormentor, determined to renew the charge. "When you've finished breakfast I'll take you to the poultry-yard if you like." "Delighted," replied the Squire, looking ruefully around him as if he meditated instant flight--"delighted, I'm sure; but they haven't flowered well this year. I'll teach you how to bud them if you like; but you're aware, Miss Horsingham, that they've no smell." John could stand it no longer, and was forced to bolt out of the room. My aunt too rose from the table with something approaching a smile; and the Squire, screwing his courage to the sticking-place, was following her into the drawing-room, evidently for a private interview, when Cousin Amelia, who seemed to have made up her mind to take bodily possession of him, hurried the visitor off to the billiard-room, there to engage in a match which would probably last till luncheon-time. I never saw anything so hopeless as the expression of the victim's countenance whilst suffering himself to be thus led into captivity. He did summon courage to entreat "Miss Coventry to come and mark"--a favour which, notwithstanding my cousin's black looks, I really had not the heart to refuse him. Game after game they played, the gentleman apparently abandoning himself to his fate. Sprawling over the table, making the most ridiculous blunders in counting, missing the most palpable of cannons, and failing to effect the easiest of hazards; the lady brandishing her mace in the most becoming attitudes, drooping her long hair over the cushions, and displaying the whiteness of her hand and slender symmetry of her fingers, as she requested her astonished adversary to teach her "how to make a bridge," or "pocket the red," or "screw it off the white," and lisped out "how hard it was to be disappointed by that provoking kiss!" The Squire made one or two futile attempts to engage me in a game, but Cousin Amelia was determined to have him all to herself; and as it was getting near the time at which I take Aunt Deborah her broth--for poor Aunt Deborah, I am sorry to say, is very ill in bed--I made my escape, and as I ran upstairs heard the billiard-room bell ring, and Squire Haycock summon up courage to "know if Lady Horsingham was at leisure, as he wished to see her for five minutes alone in the drawing-room."