thony had impressed upon his country relative,
that he should not judge by appearances, he was nevertheless under an
apprehension that the farmer's opinion of him, and the luxurious, almost
voluptuous, enjoyment he had of it, were in peril. When he had purchased
the well-probed fat goose, the shrimps, and the cheese, he was only
half-satisfied. His ideas shot boldly at a bottle of wine, and he
employed a summer-lighted evening in going a round of wine-merchants'
placards, and looking out for the cheapest bottle he could buy. And he
would have bought one--he had sealing-wax of his own and could have
stamped it with the office-stamp of Boyne's Bank for that matter, to make
it as dignified and costly as the vaunted red seals and green seals of
the placards--he would have bought one, had he not, by one of his lucky
mental illuminations, recollected that it was within his power to procure
an order to taste wine at the Docks, where you may get as much wine as
you like out of big sixpenny glasses, and try cask after cask, walking
down gas-lit paths between the huge bellies of wine which groan to be
tapped and tried, that men may know them. The idea of paying two
shillings and sixpence for one miserable bottle vanished at the
richly-coloured prospect. "That'll show him something of what London is,"
thought Anthony; and a companion thought told him in addition that the
farmer, with a skinful of wine, would emerge into the open air imagining
no small things of the man who could gain admittance into those
marvellous caverns. "By George! it's like a boy's story-book," cried
Anthony, in his soul, and he chuckled over the vision of the farmer's
amazement--acted it with his arms extended, and his hat unseated, and
plunged into wheezy fits of laughter.

He met his guests at the station. Mr. Fleming was soberly attired in
what, to Anthony's London eye, was a curiosity costume; but the broad
brim of the hat, the square cut of the brown coat, and the leggings,
struck him as being very respectable, and worthy of a presentation at any
Bank in London.

"You stick to a leather purse, brother William John?" he inquired, with
an artistic sentiment for things in keeping.

"I do," said the farmer, feeling seriously at the button over it.

"All right; I shan't ask ye to show it in the street," Anthony rejoined,
and smote Rhoda's hand as it hung.

"Glad to see your old uncle--are ye?"

Rhoda replied quietly that she was, but had come with the