more heartily, "stab my vitals, but you are a comical quiz. I wonder
what the women would say, if they saw the dashing Edward Pepper, Esquire,
walking arm in arm with thee at Ranelagh or Vauxhall! Nay, man, never be
downcast; if I laugh at thee, it is only to make thee look a little
merrier thyself. Why, thou lookest like a book of my grandfather's
called Burton's ''Anatomy of Melancholy;' and faith, a shabbier bound
copy of it I never saw."

"These jests are a little hard," said Paul, struggling between anger and
an attempt to smile; and then recollecting his late literary occupations,
and the many extracts he had taken from "Gleanings of the Belles
Lettres," in order to impart elegance to his criticisms, he threw out his
hand theatrically, and spouted with a solemn face,--

"'Of all the griefs that harass the distrest,
Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest!'"

"Well, now, prithee forgive me," said Long Ned, composing his features,
"and just tell me what you have been doing the last two months."

"Slashing and plastering!" said Paul, with conscious pride.

"Slashing and what? The boy's mad. What do you mean, Paul?"

"In other words," said our hero, speaking very slowly, "know, O very Long
Ned! that I have been critic to 'The Asinaeum.'"

If Paul's comrade laughed at first, he now laughed ten times more merrily
than ever. He threw his full length of limb upon a neighbouring sofa,
and literally rolled with cachinnatory convulsions; nor did his risible