cannot explain. I do not understand anything more than that he, my
brother--mine!--has involved Austin in--in--" (a fresh burst of tears.)

I comforted, scolded, laughed, preached, and adjured in a breath; and
then, drawing my another gently on, entered my father's study.

At the table was seated Mr. Squills, pen in hand, and a glass of his
favorite punch by his side. My father was standing on the hearth, a
shade more pale, but with a resolute expression on his countenance which
was new to its indolent, thoughtful mildness. He lifted his eyes as the
door opened, and then, putting his finger to his lips, as he glanced
towards my mother, he said gayly, "No great harm done. Don't believe
her! Women always exaggerate, and make realities of their own bugbears:
it is the vice of their lively imaginations, as Wierus has clearly shown
in accounting for the marks, moles, and hare-lips which they inflict
upon their innocent infants before they are even born. My dear boy,"
added my father, as I here kissed him and smiled in his face, "I thank
you for that smile! God bless you!" He wrung my hand and turned a little
aside.

"It is a great comfort," renewed my father, after a short pause, "to
know, when a misfortune happens, that it could not be helped. Squills
has just discovered that I have no bump of cautiousness; so that,
craniologically speaking, if I had escaped one imprudence, I should
certainly have run my head against another."

"A man with your development is made to be taken in," said Mr. Squills,
consolingly.

"Do you hear that, my own Kitty? And have you the heart to blame Jack
any longer,--a poor creature cursed with a bump that would take in the
Stock Exchange? And can any one resist his bump, Squills?"

"Impossible!" said the surgeon, authoritatively.

"Sooner or later it must involve him in its airy meshes,--eh,
Squills?--entrap him into its fatal cerebral cell. There his fate waits
him, like the ant-lion in its pit."

"Too true," quoth Squills. "What a phrenological lecturer you would have
made!"

"Go then, my love," said my father, "and lay no blame but on this
melancholy cavity of mine, where cautiousness--is not! Go, and let Sisty
have some supper; for Squills says that he has a fine development of
the mathematical organs, and we want his help. We are hard at work on
figures, Pisistratus."

My mother looked broken-hearted, and, obeying submissively, stole to the
door without a word. But as she reached