“I can see she is very quiet, and full of home affections,” he persisted, as if I were a boy at school, and he were holding the spelling book; “she is not extravagant, nor fond of waste; that I saw by the way she went through a ‘Huling’s Superb,’ with a hole in it. I could scarcely have done it any better myself. And she was really grieved, which the lady-housekeeper had not the sense to be, by the freedom—she called it recklessness—with which I picked those Jeffersons, to find one in tip-top condition. And then when I offered to make some tea, the housekeeper who had been stuffing for hours only asked if the water was boiling. But your sweetheart began to buckle up, and asked who could touch tea, after such delicious things.” “Buckle up, indeed! Uncle Corny, you are outrageous. She had got no such thing as a buckle near her. Her waist is done round with a narrow blue ribbon, the colour of the sky, as her eyes are. And I will thank you not to call her my sweetheart, if you please. I shall never have such luck. And it sounds so common. There ought to be a better expression for it. And such things are not made to be talked of.” “Very well! You won’t hear me say another word. It will all come to nothing; that’s one comfort. She goes back to London on Friday; and you will very soon console yourself with Rasp’s young woman. I am told that she has fine black eyes; and I am not sure that black don’t beat blue ones, after all.” This was so disgusting that I went away, and worked till dusk at a heavy piece of trenching; and when it was dusk I lay in wait for three felonious boys who came from Hampton, almost every evening, prowling for our apples. I caught all three, and trounced them well—which is the only proper plan—and the sound of their wailings, as they went home, restored my faith in justice. For I had given them their choice—“a licking or a summons”—and they said very justly, “Oh, a licking, if you please, sir.” The world has now come to such a pass, that a father would summon me for assault, if I so discharged his duty for him; but thirty years ago a bit of common sense survived.