the whole character. But when we only blame ourselves, we become
modest and penitent. We make allowances for others. And indeed
self-blame is a salutary exercise of conscience, which a really good
man performs every day of his life. And now, will you show me the
room in which I am to sleep, and forget for a few hours that I am
alive at all: the best thing that can happen to us in this world, my
dear Mr. Bob! There's never much amiss with our days, so long as we
can forget about them the moment we lay our heads on the pillow."

The two young men entered the house amicably, arm in arm. The girls
had already retired, but Mrs. Saunderson was still up to conduct her
visitor to the guest's chamber,--a pretty room which had been
furnished twenty-two years ago on the occasion of the farmer's
marriage, at the expense of Mrs. Saunderson's mother, for her own
occupation when she paid them a visit, and with its dimity curtains
and trellised paper it still looked as fresh and new as if decorated
and furnished yesterday.

Left alone, Kenelm undressed, and before he got into bed, bared his
right arm, and doubling it, gravely contemplated its muscular
development, passing his left hand over that prominence in the upper
part which is vulgarly called the ball. Satisfied apparently with the
size and the firmness of that pugilistic protuberance, he gently
sighed forth, "I fear I shall have to lick Thomas Bowles." In five
minutes more he was asleep.



CHAPTER X.