eased to call
my wound. She must dress it for me with her handkerchief, a service
which she rendered me even with tears. I could well have spared them,
not loving on the whole to be made ridiculous, and the injury being in
the nature of a cat's scratch. Indeed, I would have suggested for her
kind care rather the cure of my coat-sleeve, which had suffered worse in
the encounter; but I was too wise to risk the anti-climax. That she had
been rescued by a hero, that the hero should have been wounded in the
affray, and his wound bandaged with her handkerchief (which it could not
even bloody), ministered incredibly to the recovery of her self-respect;
and I could hear her relate the incident to "the young ladies, my
school-companions," in the most approved manner of Mrs. Radcliffe! To
have insisted on the torn coat-sleeve would have been unmannerly, if not
inhuman.

Presently the residence of the Archdeacon began to heave in sight. A
chaise and four smoking horses stood by the steps, and made way for us
on our approach; and even as we alighted there appeared from the
interior of the house a tall ecclesiastic, and beside him a little,
headstrong, ruddy man, in a towering passion, and brandishing over his
head a roll of paper. At sight of him Miss Dorothy flung herself on her
knees with the most moving adjurations, calling him father, assuring him
she was wholly cured and entirely repentant of her disobedience, and
entreating forgiveness; and I soon saw that she need fear no great
severity from Mr. Greensleeves, who showed himself extraordinarily fond,
loud, greedy of caresses and prodigal of tears.

To give myself a countenance, as well as to have all ready for the road
when I should find occasion, I turned to quit scores with Bellamy's two
postillions. They had not the least claim on me, but one of which they
were quite ignorant--that I was a fugitive. It is the worst feature of
that false position that every gratuity becomes a case of conscience.
You must not leave behind you any one discontented nor any one grateful.
But the whole business had been such a "hurrah-boys" from the beginning,
and had gone off in the fifth act so like a melodrama, in explosions,
reconciliations, and the rape of a post-horse, that it was plainly
impossible to keep it covered. It was plain it would have to be talked
over in all the inn-kitchens for thirty miles about, and likely for six
months to come. It only remained for me, therefore, to settl