oral?" interposed the wrathful Adrian. "Where's
constancy rewarded?

'The ouzel-cock so black of hue,
With orange-tawny bill;
The rascal with his aim so true;
The Poet's little quill!'

"Where's the moral of that? except that all's game to the poet! Certainly
we have a noble example of the devotedness of the female, who for three
entire days refuses to make herself heard, on account of a defunct male.
I suppose that's what Ricky dwells on."

"As you please, my dear Adrian," says Richard, and points out larch-buds
to his uncle, as they ride by the young green wood.

The wise youth was driven to extremity. Such a lapse from his pupil's
heroics to this last verge of Arcadian coolness, Adrian could not believe
in. "Hark at this old blackbird!" he cried, in his turn, and pretending
to interpret his fits of song:

"Oh, what a pretty comedy!--Don't we wear the mask well, my
Fiesco?--Genoa will be our own to-morrow!--Only wait until the train has
started--jolly! jolly! jolly! We'll be winners yet!

"Not a bad verse--eh, Ricky? my Lucius Junius!"

"You do the blackbird well," said Richard, and looked at him in a manner
mildly affable.

Adrian shrugged. "You're a young man of wonderful powers," he
emphatically observed; meaning to say that Richard quite beat him; for
which opinion Richard gravely thanked him, and with this they rode into
Bellingham.

There was young Tom Blaize at the station, in his Sunday beaver and gala
waistcoat and neckcloth, coming the lord over Tom Bakewell, who had
preceded his master in charge of the baggage. He likewise was bound for
London. Richard, as he was dismounting, heard Adrian say to the baronet:
"The Beast, sir, appears to be going to fetch Beauty;" but he paid no
heed to the words. Whether young Tom heard them or not, Adrian's look
took the lord out of him, and he shrunk away into obscurity, where the
nearest approach to the fashions which the tailors of Bellingham could
supply to him, sat upon him more easily, and he was not stiffened by the
eyes of the superiors whom he sought to rival. The baronet, Lady
Blandish, and Adrian remained on horseback, and received Richard's adieux
across the palings. He shook hands with each of them in the same kindly
cold way, elicitating from Adrian a marked encomium on his style of doing
it. The train came up, and Richard stepped after his uncle into one of
the carriages.

Now surely there will come an age when the