ting--I am ready to
dissolve with emotion at this tender scene--the discovery of his
parentage to a tall, ingenuous youth--bursting--you might have used,
first, burning--secondly, glowing--thirdly, consuming--fourthly,
raging--fifthly, dying--sixthly, there is perishing; but I will not much
insist upon the last, though it is certainly better than bursting. You
mean to say that you are burning, not bursting, with impatience--it is a
natural feeling, it is commendable, it is worthy of a son of your most
honourable father--I will faithfully report to him this filial
impatience, and how eager I was to remove it. I do not say satisfy it--
a person less careful of the varieties of language would have said
satisfy--an impatience satisfied is what? a contradiction of terms; but
an impatience removed is--is--the removal of an impatience. This
interview will grow very touching. Those blackened eyes--I would that
there were a green shade over them. Are you prepared to be verified?"

I bowed, fearing that any other expression of my wishes would lead to
further digression. His lordship then, putting on his spectacles, and
reading from a paper, commenced thus, I, all the while, trembling with
agitation:

"Are you the person who was nursed by one Rose Brandon, the wife of
Joseph Brandon, by trade a sawyer?"

"I am."

"What name did you go by when under the care of those persons?"

"Ralph Rattlin Brandon."

"Right, very good. I shall embrace him shortly--my heart yearns towards
him. Were you removed to a school, by a gentleman in a plain carriage,
from those Brandons?"

"I was."

"To where?"

"To Mr Roots' academy."

"Right--a good boy, an amiable boy, he was removed to Mr Roots': and,
having there imbibed the rudiments of a classical education, you were
removed to where?"

"To a boarding-school kept by a French gentleman at Stickenham, where,
in his wife, I thought I had found a mother--"

"Stop, we are not come to that yet, that is too affecting--of that anon,
as somebody says in some play. Have you, Captain Reud, a glass of water
ready, should this amiable youth or myself feel faint during this
exciting investigation?"

"Perfectly ready," said the Creole, decidedly in one of his insane fits;
for he immediately skipped behind his lordship, and, jumping upon the
locker, stood ready to invert a glass of water upon his nicely-powdered
head, containing at least three gallons, this glass being a large globe,
co