"What girls?" faltered Kenelm, retreating towards the door. "I
thought you said you had no nieces."

"But I did not say I had no daughters. Why, you are not afraid of
them, are you?"

"Sir," replied Kenelm, with a polite and politic evasion of that
question, "if your daughters are like their mother, you can't say that
they are not dangerous."

"Come," cried the farmer, looking very much pleased, while his dame
smiled and blushed, "come, that's as nicely said as if you were
canvassing the county. 'Tis not among haymakers that you learned
manners, I guess; and perhaps I have been making too free with my
betters."

"What!" quoth the courteous Kenelm, "do you mean to imply that you
were too free with your shillings? Apologize for that, if you like,
but I don't think you'll get back the shillings. I have not seen so
much of this life as you have, but, according to my experience, when a
man once parts with his money, whether to his betters or his worsers,
the chances are that he'll never see it again."

At this aphorism the farmer laughed ready to kill himself, his wife
chuckled, and even the maid-of-all-work grinned. Kenelm, preserving
his unalterable gravity, said to himself,--

"Wit consists in the epigrammatic expression of a commonplace truth,
and the dullest remark on the worth of money is almost as sure of
successful appreciation as the dullest remark on the worthlessness of