ulder, and Mr. Leaver grasping her hand with great
fervour, and looking in her face from time to time with a melancholy and
sympathetic aspect. The widow sat apart, feigning to be occupied with a
book, but stealthily observing them from behind her fan; and the two
firemen-watermen, smoking their pipes on the bank hard by, nudged each
other, and grinned in enjoyment of the joke. Very few of the party
missed the loving couple; and the few who did, heartily congratulated
each other on their disappearance.

THE CONTRADICTORY COUPLE

One would suppose that two people who are to pass their whole lives
together, and must necessarily be very often alone with each other, could
find little pleasure in mutual contradiction; and yet what is more common
than a contradictory couple?

The contradictory couple agree in nothing but contradiction. They return
home from Mrs. Bluebottle's dinner-party, each in an opposite corner of
the coach, and do not exchange a syllable until they have been seated for
at least twenty minutes by the fireside at home, when the gentleman,
raising his eyes from the stove, all at once breaks silence:

'What a very extraordinary thing it is,' says he, 'that you _will_
contradict, Charlotte!' '_I_ contradict!' cries the lady, 'but that's
just like you.' 'What's like me?' says the gentleman sharply. 'Saying
that I contradict you,' replies the lady. 'Do you mean to say that you
do _not_ contradict me?' retorts the gentleman; 'do you mean to say that
you have not been contradicting me the whole of this day?' 'Do you mean
to tell me now, that you have not? I mean to tell you nothing of the
kind,' replies the lady quietly; 'when you are wrong, of course I shall
contradict you.'

During this dialogue the gentleman has been taking his brandy-and-water
on one side of the fire, and the lady, with her dressing-case on the
table, has been curling her hair on the other. She now lets down her
back hair, and proceeds to brush it; preserving at the same time an air
of conscious rectitude and suffering virtue, which is intended to
exasperate the gentleman--and does so.

'I do believe,' he says, taking the spoon out of his glass, and tossing
it on the table, 'that of all the obstinate, positive, wrong-headed
creatures that were ever born, you are the most so, Charlotte.'
'Certainly, certainly, have it your own way, pray. You see how much _I_
contradict you,' rejoins the lady. 'Of course, you didn't cont