"Yes," said Kitty, with a quick nod and a half frown, "he has the usual
airs and graces of a newly arrived officer from the mother-country."

"Perhaps you find the colonists more to your mind," responded Gulian
somewhat severely; but Clarissa gave his sleeve a warning twitch, as
Kitty made answer with heightened color:--

"My own countrymen are ever first with me, as you know full well,
Gulian, but one must dance sometimes to keep up one's heart in those
times, and Captain Yorke has a passably good step which suits with
mine."

What Gulian would have replied to this was never known, for at that
moment an outcry arose in the hall, followed by the bump, bump of some
heavy body rolling down the staircase, and Peter's boyish voice shouting
out, between gasps of laughter,--

"Pompey, Pompey, I say!--it's nobody but me; oh, what a proper old goose
it is; do, somebody come and thrash him."

In a second Gulian and Kitty were outside the door, and beheld at the
foot of the winding stairs poor Pompey, picking himself up, with many
groans and much rubbing of his shins, while Peter, rolling himself
nearly double with laughter, stood midway of the flight, with a queer
object in his hand which Gulian seized hastily.

"It's only a gourd," gasped Peter between paroxysms. "I kept it in my
closet for a week, and half an hour ago I stole a bit of wick out of
Dinah's pantry and dipped it well in melted tallow, and than stuck it