darter. Suppose she should turn out a girl with black eyes, and red
cheeks, and all that sort of thing; I dare say she would expect me to
kiss her?"

"Certainly; she will expect that, should her eyes even be white, and her
cheeks black. Natural affection expects this much even among the least
enlightened of the human race."

"I am disposed to do everything according to usage," returned Marble,
quite innocently, and more discomposed by the situation in which he so
unexpectedly found himself, than he might have been willing to own;
"while, at the same time, I do not wish to do anything that is not
expected from a son and an uncle. If these relations had only come one
at a time."

"Poh, poh, Moses--do not be quarrelling with your good luck, just as it's
at its height. Here is the house, and I'll engage one of those four girls
is your niece--that with the bonnet, for a dollar; she being ready to go
home, and the whole having come to the door, in consequence of seeing the
chaise driving down the road. They are puzzled at finding us in it,
however, instead of the usual driver."

Marble hemmed, attempted to clear his throat, pulled down both sleeves of
his jacket, settled his black handkerchief to his mind, slily got rid of
his quid, and otherwise "cleared ship for action," as he would have been
very apt to describe his own preparations. After all, his heart failed
him, at the pinch; and just as I was pulling up the horse, he said to me,
in a voice so small and delicate, that it sounded odd to one who had heard
the man's thunder, as he hailed yards and tops in gales of wind--