It could not have been malice--it certainly must have been want of thought--that induced Aunt Martha to break the temporary silence with the remark, addressed to the Colonel: "It is a funny question I am going to ask, I know, Colonel, but I suppose I have an old woman's privilege. Mrs. Owen and myself were talking about ages a day or two ago, and she thought you were more than thirty-five. How old _are_ you?" If half a paper of pins, with all the points upward, had suddenly made their appearance in the bottom of the Colonel's chair, he probably could not have been more discomfited. What reason he had to be unquiet, will be more apparent at a later period. He fidgetted a little and hemmed more than once, before he replied: "Humph! hum! Well, Madame, to tell you the truth, I _am_ a little on the shady side of extreme youth--old enough to be through with my juvenile indiscretions--ha! ha!" (The laugh decidedly forced and feeble). "I am a little over thirty-two--was thirty-two in March last." "I thought so! I was sure you could not be older than that!" said Aunt Martha, in the most natural way in the world, while Emily took a quick look round at the Colonel, which said, much plainer than words: "Oh, what a bouncer!" "No, Madame," added the Colonel, perhaps aware that fibs require to be told over at least twice before they acquire the weight of truths told _once_. "No, Madame, a fraction over thirty-two, as I said." At that moment the invisible influences, if they have good ears, may have heard Frank Wallace getting up from his chair, and muttering between his teeth something very like: "Humph! well, I cannot stand _this_ any longer! If I do not succeed in making the house too warm to hold that respectable individual, within ten minutes, I shall certainly leave it myself!" Just then the words "thirty-two," from the Colonel's lips, met his ear, and though he did not catch the context, so as to know what it was all about, the spirit of malicious (and it must be said, reckless) mischief, prompted him to lounge leisurely forward and take a share in the conversation, although uninvited. "Ah, Colonel, did I understand you to say thirty-two?"