being shut up at the Chase in the summer months, when one can neither
hunt nor shoot, so as to make one's self pleasantly sleepy in the
evening. However, we are to astonish the echoes on the 30th of July. My
grandfather has given me carte blanche for once, and I promise you the
entertainment shall be worthy of the occasion. The world will not see
the grand epoch of my majority twice. I think I shall have a lofty
throne for you, Godmamma, or rather two, one on the lawn and another in
the ballroom, that you may sit and look down upon us like an Olympian
goddess."

"I mean to bring out my best brocade, that I wore at your christening
twenty years ago," said Mrs. Irwine. "Ah, I think I shall see your poor
mother flitting about in her white dress, which looked to me almost like
a shroud that very day; and it WAS her shroud only three months after;
and your little cap and christening dress were buried with her too. She
had set her heart on that, sweet soul! Thank God you take after your
mother's family, Arthur. If you had been a puny, wiry, yellow baby, I
wouldn't have stood godmother to you. I should have been sure you would
turn out a Donnithorne. But you were such a broad-faced, broad-chested,
loud-screaming rascal, I knew you were every inch of you a Tradgett."

"But you might have been a little too hasty there, Mother," said Mr.
Irwine, smiling. "Don't you remember how it was with Juno's last pups?
One of them was the very image of its mother, but it had two or three
of its father's tricks notwithstanding. Nature is clever enough to cheat
even you, Mother."

"Nonsense, child! Nature never makes a ferret in the shape of a mastiff.
You'll never persuade me that I can't tell what men are by their
outsides. If I don't like a man's looks, depend upon it I shall never