had discovered. The ambitious dreamer, for it was he, thus detected and
disturbed, looked embarrassed for a moment as the stout lady, touching
him with the umbrella, said,--

"Well, I declare if this is not too bad! You sent word that you should
not be able to come out with us to see the 'luminations, and here you are
as large as life!"

"I did not think, at the moment you wrote to me, that-"

"Oh, stuff!" interrupted the stout woman, with a significant, good-
humoured shake of her head; "I know what's what. Tell the truth, and
shame the gentleman who objects to showing his feet. You are a wild
fellow, John Ardworth, you are! You like looking after the pretty faces,
you do, you do--ha, ha, ha! very natural! So did you once,--did not you,
Mr. Mivers, did not you, eh? Men must be men,--they always are men, and
it's my belief that men they always will be!"

With this sage conjecture into the future, the lady turned to Mr. Mivers,
who, thus appealed to, extricated with some difficulty his chin from the
folds of his belcher, and putting up his small face, said, in a small
voice, "Yes, I was a wild fellow once; but you have tamed me, you have,
Mrs. M.!"

And therewith the chin sank again into the belcher, and the small voice
died into a small sigh.

The stout lady glanced benignly at her spouse, and then resuming her
address, to which Ardworth listened with a half-frown and a half-smile,
observed encouragingly,--