they merrily called themselves, to the terminus. They were Victor's
guests; they had no trouble, no expense, none of the nipper reckonings
which dog our pleasures; the state of pure bliss. Fenellan's enviousness
drove him at the Rev. Mr. Barmby until the latter jumped to the seat
beside Nesta in her carriage, Mademoiselle de Seilles and Mr. Sowerby
facing them. Lady Grace Halley, in the carriage behind, heard Nesta's
laugh; which Mr. Barmby had thought vacuous, beseeming little girls, that
laugh at nothings. She questioned Fenellan.

'Oh,' said he, 'I merely mentioned that the Rev. gentleman carries his
musical instrument at the bottom of his trunk.'

She smiled: 'And who are in the cab?'

'Your fiddles are in the cab, in charge of Peridon and Catkin. Those two
would have writhed like head and tail of a worm, at a division on the way
to the station. Point a finger at Peridon, you run Catkin through the
body. They're a fabulous couple.'

Victor cut him short. 'I deny that those two are absurd.'

'And Catkin's toothache is a galvanic battery upon Peridon.'

Nataly strongly denied it. Peridon and Catkin pertained to their genial
picture of the dear sweet nest in life; a dale never traversed by the
withering breath they dreaded.

Fenellan then, to prove that he could be as bad in his way as Colney,
fell to work on the absent Miss Priscilla Graves and Mr. Pempton, with a
pitchfork's exaltation of the sacred attachment of the divergently