Being completely confident that we ran no risk of discovery from any exercise the squire might make of his natural faculties, I had no compunction about introducing Mrs. Cynthia and Mr. Sadler, that the feast of reason and the flow of soul might be unimpeded. Thoroughly alive to the whimsicality of the passages that were like to ensue from such ill-assorted company sitting down together, I mischievously determined to give the thing a more extravagant touch if possible, by sailing as near to the truth as I could. Therefore, fully aware of the delicious savour of the whole affair, Mrs. Cynthia was presented as my wife, the Countess of Tiverton, and our friend Mr. Sadler, the highwayman and lord knows what besides, as her ladyship's choleric papa, his grace of Salop. Never, I vow, was a man so overcome with the society in which he found himself as this rustical clown of a justice. Having plainly been used to no better all his life than that of his pigs, his sheep, his cows, his horses, the village beadle, and the worthies of the village ale-house, he had no higher sense of rendering what he conceived was due to our superior dignity, than they had in rendering the same to his. His bows, his smirks, his grimaces, his gross flatteries, would have excited our pity had he deserved any. They were so grotesque that even Mr. Sadler grinned through his great beard. The landlord too fell in very sagaciously with the whole thing. Whatever opinion he might entertain on his own part of our figure in the world, the fact that we had been admitted to the friendship of Mr. Sadler was a sufficient guarantee of his not going unrequited. Armed with this assurance he produced some really excellent wine in liberal quantities, and furnished us with the fullest meed of his respectful service; though it is gravely to be doubted whether he considered we had any better right to enjoy our titles than had Mr. Sadler. But I will go bail for the justice, who rejoiced in the name of Hodgkin, that no such doubts invaded his mind. He was simply happy. His wildest dreams were realized. His loftiest ambitions were fulfilled. Was he not hobnobbing with the great at their own table on terms of perfect equality? He never addressed any of us without bringing in our titles somehow, either as the prologue or the epilogue of what he had to say, sometimes as both, and in the middle too. And just as a duke is a personage of more consideration than an earl, even if he be a justice of the peace, or a countess if she be young and fair, so did our squire, after he had felt his way a bit, had drunk a glass or two and got used to such unaccustomed company, direct the main of his attention to his grace of Salop. Indeed such advances did he presently make in the good esteem of that venerable nobleman that he was fain to direct nearly the whole of his discourse to him. He played him, and ogled him, your grace'd him this, and your grace'd him that, until he felt he