"Ay, ay; all this is easy enough aforehand, and to such scholars as you; but it comes hard on a fellow like myself to heave his idees out of him, as it might be, with a windlass. I managed the old woman right well, and could get along with a dozen mothers, better than with one sister's darter. Suppose she should turn out a girl with black eyes, and red cheeks, and all that sort of thing; I dare say she would expect me to kiss her?" "Certainly; she will expect that, should her eyes even be white, and her cheeks black. Natural affection expects this much even among the least enlightened of the human race." "I am disposed to do everything according to usage," returned Marble, quite innocently, and more discomposed by the situation in which he so unexpectedly found himself, than he might have been willing to own; "while, at the same time, I do not wish to do anything that is not expected from a son and an uncle. If these relations had only come one at a time." "Poh, poh, Moses--do not be quarrelling with your good luck, just as it's at its height. Here is the house, and I'll engage one of those four girls is your niece--that with the bonnet, for a dollar; she being ready to go home, and the whole having come to the door, in consequence of seeing the chaise driving down the road. They are puzzled at finding us in it, however, instead of the usual driver." Marble hemmed, attempted to clear his throat, pulled down both sleeves of his jacket, settled his black handkerchief to his mind, slily got rid of his quid, and otherwise "cleared ship for action," as he would have been very apt to describe his own preparations. After all, his heart failed him, at the pinch; and just as I was pulling up the horse, he said to me, in a voice so small and delicate, that it sounded odd to one who had heard the man's thunder, as he hailed yards and tops in gales of wind-- "Miles, my dear boy, I do not half like this business; suppose you get out, and open the matter to the ladies. There's four of them, you see, and that's three too many. Go, now, Miles, that's a good fellow, and I'll do the same for you another time. I can't have _four_ nieces here, you'll own yourself." "And while I am telling your story to your niece, your own sister's daughter, what will you be doing here, pray?" "Doing?--Why anything, my dear Miles, that can be useful--I say, boy, do you think she looks anything like me? When you get nearer, if you should think so, just hold up a hand as a signal, that I may not be taken by surprise. Yes, yes; you go first, and I'll follow; and as for 'doing,' why, you know, I can hold this bloody horse."