summary close long before. Both Barnes, the butcher; and Grossby, the
confectioner, confessed that they, too, found it hard ever to say 'No' to
him, and, speaking broadly, never could.

'Except once,'said Barnes, 'when he wanted me to let him have a ox to
roast whole out on the common, for the Battle of Waterloo. I stood out
against him on that. "No, no," says I, "I'll joint him for ye, Mr.
Harrington. You shall have him in joints, and eat him at home";-ha! ha!'

'Just like him!' said Grossby, with true enjoyment of the princely
disposition that had dictated the patriotic order.

'Oh!--there!' Kilne emphasized, pushing out his arm across the bar, as
much as to say, that in anything of such a kind, the great Mel never had
a rival.

'That "Marquis" affair changed him a bit,' said Barnes.

'Perhaps it did, for a time,' said Kilne. 'What's in the grain, you know.
He couldn't change. He would be a gentleman, and nothing 'd stop him.'

'And I shouldn't wonder but what that young chap out in Portugal 'll want
to be one, too; though he didn't bid fair to be so fine a man as his
father.'

'More of a scholar,' remarked Kilne. 'That I call his worst
fault--shilly-shallying about that young chap. I mean his.' Kilne
stretched a finger toward the dead man's house. 'First, the young chap's
to be sent into the Navy; then it's the Army; then he's to be a judge,
and sit on criminals; then he goes out to his sister in Portugal; and now
there's nothing but a tailor open to him, as I see, if we're to get our
money.'

'Ah! and he hasn't got too much spirit to work to pay his father's
debts,' added Barnes. 'There's a business there to make any man's
fortune-properly directed, I say. But, I suppose, like father like son,
he'll becoming the Marquis, too. He went to a gentleman's school, and
he's had foreign training. I don't know what to think about it. His
sisters over there--they were fine women.'

'Oh! a fine family, every one of 'em! and married well!' exclaimed the
publican.

'I never had the exact rights of that "Marquis" affair,' said Grossby;
and, remembering that he had previously laughed knowingly when it was
alluded to, pursued: 'Of course I heard of it at the time, but how did he
behave when he was blown upon?'

Barnes undertook to explain; but Kilne, who relished the narrative quite
as well, and was readier, said: 'Look here! I 'll tell you. I had it from
his own mouth one night when he wasn't--not quite himself. He wa