te then. Don't you know that song of
'Excelsior,' Mr. Newton? You ought to learn to sing it."

Yes;--he was learning to sing it after a fine fashion;--borrowing his
tradesman's money, and promising to marry his tradesman's daughter!
He was half inclined to be angry with this interference from Mary
Bonner;--and yet he liked her for it. Could it be that she herself
felt an interest in what concerned him? "Ah me,"--he said to
himself,--"how much better would it have been to have learned
something, to have fitted myself for some high work; and to have been
able to choose some such woman as this for my wife!" And all that had
been sacrificed to horses at the Moonbeam, and little dinners with
Captain Fooks and Lieutenant Cox! Every now and again during his life
Phoebus had touched his trembling ears, and had given him to know
that to sport with the tangles of Naaera's hair was not satisfactory
as the work of a man's life. But, alas, the god had intervened but
to little purpose. The horses at the Moonbeam, which had been two,
became four, and then six; and now he was pledged to marry Polly
Neefit,--if only he could induce Polly Neefit to have him. It was too
late in the day for him to think now of Parliament and Mary Bonner.

And then, before he left them, poor Clary whispered a word into
his ear,--a cousinly, brotherly word, such as their circumstances
authorised her to make. "Is it settled about the property, Ralph?"
For she, too, had heard that this question of a sale was going
forward.

"Not quite, Clary."

"You won't sell it; will you?"

"I don't think I shall."

"Oh, don't;--pray don't. Anything will be better than that. It is so
good to wait." She was thinking only of Ralph, and of his interests,
but she could not forget the lesson which she was daily teaching to
herself.

"If I can help it, I shall not sell it."

"Papa will help you;--will he not? If I were you they should drag
me in pieces before I would part with my birthright;--and such a
birthright!" It had occurred to her once that Ralph might feel that,
after what had passed between them one night on the lawn, he was
bound not to wait, that it was his duty so to settle his affairs that
he might at once go to her father and say,--"Though I shall never be
Mr. Newton of Newton, I have still such and such means of supporting
your daughter." Ah! if he would only be open with her, and tell
her everything, he would soon know how unnecessary it was to make
a