to him, and, speaking broadly, never could.

'Except once,'said Barnes, 'when he wanted me to let him have a ox to
roast whole out on the common, for the Battle of Waterloo. I stood out
against him on that. "No, no," says I, "I'll joint him for ye, Mr.
Harrington. You shall have him in joints, and eat him at home";-ha! ha!'

'Just like him!' said Grossby, with true enjoyment of the princely
disposition that had dictated the patriotic order.

'Oh!--there!' Kilne emphasized, pushing out his arm across the bar, as
much as to say, that in anything of such a kind, the great Mel never had
a rival.

'That "Marquis" affair changed him a bit,' said Barnes.

'Perhaps it did, for a time,' said Kilne. 'What's in the grain, you
know. He couldn't change. He would be a gentleman, and nothing 'd stop
him.'

'And I shouldn't wonder but what that young chap out in Portugal 'll want
to be one, too; though he didn't bid fair to be so fine a man as his
father.'

'More of a scholar,' remarked Kilne. 'That I call his worst fault--
shilly-shallying about that young chap. I mean his.' Kilne stretched a
finger toward the dead man's house. 'First, the young chap's to be sent
into the Navy; then it's the Army; then he's to be a judge, and sit on
criminals; then he goes out to his sister in Portugal; and now there's
nothing but a tailor open to him, as I see, if we're to get our money.'