her portly figure as she leaned back in her chair, and before her sat Juvenal. CHAPTER III. "Just so, Mrs. Gillett," he said; "just as you say. I am _not_ treated like the master in my own house; no one consults or obeys me. As for my niece, she opposes me in every possible way!" "Oh! that's a pity, I'm sure," said the commiserating listener, shaking her head; "that shouldn't be, you know: it's very wrong." "So I tell her," continued he, "but she persists in it, and unhesitatingly insults Marmaduke Burton before my face--something about some trees; I don't exactly know what she meant, but _he_ did, and walked away quite offended." "Trees?" asked Gillett, musingly; "trees? Ay, that must be it! When Squire Burton came to the property, he was much in debt, they said, and he cut down a lot of fine old oaks about the place: don't you call it to mind, sir?" "To be sure I do," he answered, his hair almost on end at this solution of Minnie's riddle--"What a wicked thing for a girl of her age to say, on purpose to hurt his feelings, and I was so anxious for the match!" "I've always remarked," rejoined his companion, dropping her words one by one sententiously, "that the children of military men have more devil in them than others, more quarrelsome-like; depend upon it, 'tis what they're brought up with." She spoke as if they were young cannibals, fed upon the trophies of war around a blazing fire; as, says an old song there, "Where my forefathers feasted on the blood of Christians." "Very likely!" ejaculated Juvenal, who was growing prosy and stultified by her reasonings, and his own over-thinking. "And yet her father was a poor, maimed, one-armed man after all, not at all like a soldier. I often wondered how Baby, poor child, could love him!" Juvenal evidently thought that a son of Mars should, literally and of necessity, be a man of _arms_. "But what's to be done with Minnie?" he uttered thoughtfully. "It would be very dreadful were she to marry the poor curate, or even the lawyer; for her own fortune is a mere trifle. Almost all her mother's portion was spent in paying off Dalzell's debts. I am living, and am obliged to live, quite up to my income; her aunts can give her nothing until their death. What is to be done, Mrs. Gillett? pray, advise me how to act?" "I'd lock her up," whispered Gillett, "and not let her see any one else." "But myself?" he asked; "what good would that do?" "No, not you--the squire. Don't let her go about with her aunts. One wants the lawyer to have her; t'other, the parson. Lock her up; it's just the way to tame a high spirit, and make her like the man!" "Well, so I've thought too, Mrs. Gillett, but there would be a dreadful outcry were I to attempt it. How is it to be done?" "Well, give her, say a month, to decide; and if she don't say Yes, then do it, and she'll soon come to. You are her guardian, and have a right to know what's best for her."