"O you little rogue! you are too hard upon this devotee to your dear deluding sex. It is only his excess of politeness that has made him forget his historical reading." "His politeness! Fiddlestick! I would as soon have a troop of boys inflict the intolerable tediousness of their calf-love upon me as endure the rhapsodies of a booby, who strips us of our good flesh and blood, frailties and all, to etherealize us into an incomprehensible compound of tears, sighs, moonshine, music, love, flowers, and hysterics." "Emily, how you run on!" broke in Mrs Cheesham. "My dear Mr Stukeley, really you must not encourage the girl in her nonsense. I declare I sometimes think her tongue runs away with her wits." "Better that, I'm sure, madam, than have it run away without them," responded Stukeley, in a deprecating tone, which threw Mrs Cheesham, whose intellect was none of the acutest, completely out. "Girls, there are Mr Blowze and Mr Lilylipz," said Mrs Cheesham, looking in the direction of the friends, Adolph and Eugene; "you had better arrange with them about coming this evening." Emily advanced with her sister to the engaging pair, who received them with that peculiar contortion of the body, between a jerk and a shuffle, which young men are in the habit of mistaking for a bow, and was soon deep in the heart of a flirtation with Adolph, while Fanny stood listening to the vapid nothings of Eugene, a very model of passive endurance. Frank Preston was anything but an easy spectator of this movement; nor was Emily blind to this; but, like a wilful woman, she could not forbear playing the petty tyrant, and exercising freely the power to torment which she saw that she possessed. "You will be of our party to-night, gentlemen," continued Mrs Cheesham. "We are to have a little music. You are fond of music, Mr Stukeley, I know; and no pressing can be necessary to an ama_toor_ like you, Mr Francis. I can assure you, you'll meet some very nice people. Mr and Mrs M'Skrattachan, highly respectable people--an old Highland family, and with very high connections. Mr M'Skrattachan's mother's sister's aunt--no, his aunt's mother's sister--yes, that was it--Mr M'Skrattachan's aunt's mother's sister; and yet I don't know--I dare say I was right before--at all events, it was one or other of them--married a second cousin--something of that kind--of the Duke of Argyle, by the mother's side They had a large estate in Skye a Ross-shire--I am not sure which, but it was somewhere thereabout." Stukeley and Preston were glad to cover their retreat by acceptance of Mrs Cheesham's invitation; and, leaving her to empty the dregs of the details which she had begun into the willing ears of some of her more submissive friends, they made their escape from the pump-room.