me my grateful duty to your ladyship on this occasion, which appoints
me to be directed by you in all things which my conscience will
permit."

"Since you permit me such influence, then," replied the Lady Peveril,
"I shall be moderate in exercising it, in order that I may, in my
domination at least, give you a favourable impression of the new order
of things. So, if you will be a subject of mine for one day,
neighbour, I am going, at my lord and husband's command, to issue out
my warrants to invite the whole neighbourhood to a solemn feast at the
Castle, on Thursday next; and I not only pray you to be personally
present yourself, but to prevail on your worthy pastor, and such
neighbours and friends, high and low, as may think in your own way, to
meet with the rest of the neighbourhood, to rejoice on this joyful
occasion of the King's Restoration, and thereby to show that we are to
be henceforward a united people."

The parliamentarian Major was considerably embarrassed by this
proposal. He looked upward, and downward, and around, cast his eye
first to the oak-carved ceiling, and anon fixed it upon the floor;
then threw it around the room till it lighted on his child, the sight
of whom suggested another and a better train of reflections than
ceiling and floor had been able to supply.

"Madam," he said, "I have long been a stranger to festivity, perhaps
from constitutional melancholy, perhaps from the depression which is
natural to a desolate and deprived man, in whose ear mirth is marred,
like a pleasant air when performed on a mistuned instrument. But
though neither my thoughts nor temperament are Jovial or Mercurial, it
becomes me to be grateful to Heaven for the good He has sent me by the