pt rather aloof from you till then,
for fear you should want anything from them--I say all the carriage
people in the neighbourhood, when they see how swimmingly matters are
going on, will come in shoals to visit you.'

'Really,' said I, 'you are getting on swimmingly.'

'Oh,' said the postilion, 'I was not a gentleman's servant nine years
without learning the ways of gentry, and being able to know gentry when I
see them.'

'And what do you say to all this?' I demanded of Belle.

'Stop a moment,' interposed the postilion, 'I have one more word to
say:--and when you are surrounded by your comforts, keeping your nice
little barouche and pair, your coachman and livery servant, and visited
by all the carriage people in the neighbourhood--to say nothing of the
time when you come to the family estates on the death of the old
people--I shouldn't wonder if now and then you look back with longing and
regret to the days when you lived in the damp dripping dingle, had no
better equipage than a pony or donkey cart, and saw no better company
than a tramper or gypsy, except once, when a poor postilion was glad to
seat himself at your charcoal fire.'

'Pray,' said I, 'did you ever take lessons in elocution?'

'Not directly,' said the postilion; 'but my old master, who was in
Parliament, did, and so did his son, who was intended to be an orator. A
great professor used to come and give them lessons, and I used to stand
and listen, by which means I picked up a considerable quantity of what is
called rhetoric. In what I last said, I was aiming at what I have heard
him frequently endeavouring to teach my governors as a thing
indispensably necessary in all oratory, a graceful
pere--pere--peregrination.'

'Peroration, perhaps?'

'Just so,' said the postilion; 'and now I'm sure I am not mistaken about
you; you have taken lessons yourself, at first hand, in the college
vacations, and a promising pupil you were, I make no doubt. Well, your
friends will be all the happier to get you back. Has your governor much
borough interest?'

'I ask you once more,' said I, addressing myself to Belle, 'what you
think of the history which this good man has made for us?'

'What should I think of it,' said Belle, still keeping her face buried in
her hands, 'but that it is mere nonsense?'

'Nonsense!' said the postilion.

'Yes,' said the girl, 'and you know it.'

'May my leg always ache, if I do,' said the postilion, patting his leg
with his