e figments in question were generally ill
understood and imperfectly recollected, it is really surprising that the
young gentleman did not occasion more mischief than actually occurred by
the quips and quiddities which he delighted to put in practice whenever
he met with any one simple enough to permit the exercise of his talents.

Some damage he did effect by his experiments, as Mrs. Deborah found to
her cost. He killed a bed of old-fashioned spice cloves, the pride of
her heart, by salting the ground to get rid of the worms. Her broods of
geese also, and of turkeys, fell victims to a new and infallible mode of
feeding, which was to make them twice as fat in half the time. Somehow
or other, they all died under the operation. So did half a score of fine
apple-trees, under an improved method of grafting; whilst a magnificent
brown Bury pear, that covered one end of the house, perished of the
grand discovery of severing the bark to increase the crop. He lamed Mrs.
Deborah's old horse by doctoring him for a prick in shoeing, and ruined
her favourite cow, the best milch cow in the county, by a most needless
attempt to increase her milk.

Now these mischances and misdemeanors, ay, or the half of them, would
undoubtedly have occasioned Mr. Adolphus's dismission, and the recall of
poor Edward, every account of whom was in the highest degree favourable,
had the worthy miller been able to refrain from lecturing his cousin
upon her neglect of the one, and her partiality for the other. It was
really astonishing that John Stokes, a man of sagacity in all other
respects, never could understand that scolding was of all devisable
processes the least likely to succeed in carrying his point with one who
was such a proficient in that accomplishment, that if the old penalty
for female scolds, the ducking-stool, had continued in fashion, she
would have stood an excellent chance of attaining to that distinction.
But so it was. The same blood coursed through their veins, and his
tempestuous good-will and her fiery anger took the same form of violence
and passion.

Nothing but these lectures _could_ have kept Mrs. Deborah constant in
the train of such a trumpery, jiggetting, fidgetty little personage
as Mr. Adolphus,--the more especially as her heart was assailed in its
better and softer parts, by the quiet respectfulness of Mrs. Thornly's
demeanour, who never forgot that she had experienced her protection
in the hour of need, and by the ir