"There's charity for you, and gratitude!" exclaimed Vibert, who, entering the room while Bruce was speaking, had heard his concluding sentence. "Here is a gentleman who came to our aid when we were in a dilemma, who has shown us courtesy and kindness, and he is to be condemned, unheard, as an impostor, because a pedant, who has never put foot in stirrup or fired a shot in his life, cannot understand a frank, bold, chivalrous nature. Blair thinks that all must be evil that does not just square with his old-fashioned notions. Emmie, you should stand up for your friend," added the youth more playfully, as he threw himself on an arm-chair, and stretched himself, after what he considered to be a long and tiresome walk, "for the colonel not only helped to pull you out of your ditch, but he told me that my sister is the prettiest girl that he has seen on this side of the big fish-pond." "I hope that you do not encourage such impertinence," observed Bruce sternly. "Oh, if the colonel dare to hint that my brother is the pleasantest fellow that he has met with, I'll resent the impertinence, I promise you," laughed Vibert. Emmie foresaw, with uneasiness, more angry sparring between her two brothers, and, to turn the current of conversation, asked Vibert what he thought of the Blairs. "Oh, our tutor is a learned professor, who has pored over books, and puzzled over problems, till he has grown into the shape of a note of interrogation," replied Vibert lightly. "As for his wife, she's a homely body, as clever men's wives usually are; Mrs. Blair looks like a housekeeper, but has not the merit of being a good one." Bruce, whom the conversation did not greatly interest, had taken up a book. "And her family?" inquired Emmie; "I suppose that you have made their acquaintance." "We were all gathered together at early dinner, if one could call that a dinner at which there was nothing eatable," said the fastidious Vibert. "There was old Blair at one end of the table, hacking at a shoulder of mutton, and talking, as he did so, to Bruce about Sophocles and Euripides. There was Mrs. Blair at the other end, ladling out the potatoes. Bruce and I sat on one side, and three demure little chaps in pinafores on the other, like degrees of comparison, small, smaller, and smallest; dull, duller, and dullest. The children were so terribly well-behaved, that they never asked for anything (not that there was much to ask for), they never spoke a word, nor lifted their eyes from their plates, but wielded with propriety their forks and spoons; I think that only the eldest of the three was trusted with a knife. The little fellows' looks seemed to say, 'It is a matter of business, and not of play, to eat shoulder of mutton and boiled rice pudding, and drink water out of horn mugs.' The whole affair had such a nursery look about it, that I half expected to be provided with a pinafore, instead of a dinner napkin."