clever cousin, and find that
he does not care a brass button for the country, take my word for it, I
will lick him more easily than I licked Tom Bowles."

"Tom Bowles! who is he?--ah! I remember some letter of yours in which
you spoke of a Bowles, whose favourite study was mankind, a moral
philosopher."

"Moral philosophers," answered Kenelm, "have so muddled their brains
with the alcohol of new ideas that their moral legs have become shaky,
and the humane would rather help them to bed than give them a licking.
My Tom Bowles is a muscular Christian, who became no less muscular, but
much more Christian, after he was licked."

And in this pleasant manner these two oddities settled their conference,
and went up to bed with arms wrapped round each other's shoulder.

CHAPTER IV.

KENELM found it a much harder matter to win Lady Glenalvon to his side
than he had anticipated. With the strong interest she had taken in
Kenelm's future, she could not but revolt from the idea of his union
with an obscure portionless girl whom he had only known a few weeks,
and of whose very parentage he seemed to know nothing, save an assurance
that she was his equal in birth. And, with the desire, which she had
cherished almost as fondly as Sir Peter, that Kenelm might win a bride
in every way so worthy of his choice as Cecilia Travers, she felt not
less indignant than regretful at the overthrow of her plans.

At first, indeed, she was so provoked that she would not listen to
his pleadings. She broke away from him with a rudeness she had never
exhibited to any one before, refused to grant him another interview in
order to re-discuss the matter, and said that, so far from using her
influence in favour of his romantic folly, she would remonstrate well
with Lady Chillingly and Sir Peter against yielding their assent to his
"thus throwing himself away."

It was not till the third day after his arrival that, touched by the
grave but haughty mournfulness of his countenance, she yielded to the
arguments of Sir Peter in the course of a private conversation with that
worthy baronet. Still it was reluctantly (she did not fulfil her threat
of remonstrance with Lady Chillingly) that she conceded the point,
that a son who, succeeding to the absolute fee-simple of an estate, had
volunteered the resettlement of it on terms singularly generous to both
his parents, was entitled to some sacrifice of their inclinations on a
question in which he deemed h