evidently afforded her great
amusement, I was not sorry for.

"Why, Fanny," whispered I, when we joined the ladies in the
drawing-room, "you are growing quite frisky; what a row you and Lawless
were making at dinner-time! I have not heard you talk and laugh so much
for many a day."

"Oh! your friend is famous fun," replied Fanny--"perfectly
irresistible; I assure you I am delighted with him--he is something
quite new to me."

"I am so glad you have asked Lawless here," observed I to Oaklands; "do
you see how much pleased and amused Fanny is with him?--he appears to
have aroused her completely--the very thing we were wishing for. He'll
be of more use to her than all of us put together."

"He seems to me to talk a vast deal of nonsense," replied Harry, rather
crossly, as I fancied.

"And yet 1 can't help being amused by it," replied I; "I'm like Fanny in
that respect."

"I was not aware your sister had a taste for that style of conversation.
I confess it's a sort of thing which very soon tires me."

"Splendid old fellow, Sir John," observed Lawless in an undertone,
seating himself by Fanny; "I never look at him without thinking of
one of those jolly old Israelites who used to keep knocking about the
country with a plurality of wives and families, and an immense stud of
camels and donkeys: they read 'em out to us at church, you know--what do
you call 'em, eh?"

"One of the Patriarchs, I suppose you mean," replied Fanny, smiling.

"Eh--yes, that's the thing. Noah was rather in that line before he took
to the water system, wasn't he? Well, now, if you can fancy one of
these ancients, decently dressed in a blue coat with brass buttons, knee
shorts and silk stockings, like a Christian, it's my belief he'd be the
very moral (as the old women call it) of Sir John; uncommonly ~327~~
handsome he must have been--even better looking than Harry, when he was
his age."

"Mr. Oaklands is so pale and thin now," replied Fanny.

"Eh! isn't he just?" was the rejoinder. "Many a man has been booked for
an inside place in a hearse for a less hurt than his; and I don't know
that he is out of the wood, even yet."

"Why, you don't think him worse?" exclaimed Fanny anxiously. "Nothing
has gone wrong--you have not been told--are they keeping anything from
me?"

"Eh! no! 'pon my word; Ellis, who is getting him into condition, say's
he's all right, and will be as fresh as a colt in a month or two. Why,
you look quite frightened."