est tempered person (I allude to Mr.
Godfrey)--the simplest and pleasantest and easiest to please--you ever
met with. He loved everybody. And everybody loved HIM. What chance
had Mr. Franklin--what chance had anybody of average reputation and
capacities--against such a man as this?

On the fourteenth, came Mr. Godfrey's answer.

He accepted my mistress's invitation, from the Wednesday of the birthday
to the evening of Friday--when his duties to the Ladies' Charities would
oblige him to return to town. He also enclosed a copy of verses on
what he elegantly called his cousin's "natal day." Miss Rachel, I was
informed, joined Mr. Franklin in making fun of the verses at dinner;
and Penelope, who was all on Mr. Franklin's side, asked me, in great
triumph, what I thought of that. "Miss Rachel has led you off on a false
scent, my dear," I replied; "but MY nose is not so easily mystified.
Wait till Mr. Ablewhite's verses are followed by Mr. Ablewhite himself."

My daughter replied, that Mr. Franklin might strike in, and try his
luck, before the verses were followed by the poet. In favour of this
view, I must acknowledge that Mr. Franklin left no chance untried of
winning Miss Rachel's good graces.

Though one of the most inveterate smokers I ever met with, he gave up
his cigar, because she said, one day, she hated the stale smell of it
in his clothes. He slept so badly, after this effort of self-denial, for
want of the composing effect of the tobacco to which he was used, and
came down morning after morning looking so haggard and worn, that Miss
Rachel herself begged him to take to his cigars again. No! he would take
to nothing again that could cause her a moment's annoyance; he would
fight it out resolutely, and get back his sleep, sooner or later, by
main force of patience in waiting for it. Such devotion as this, you may
say (as some of them said downstairs), could never fail of producing
the right effect on Miss Rachel--backed up, too, as it was, by the
decorating work every day on the door. All very well--but she had a
photograph of Mr. Godfrey in her bed-room; represented speaking at a
public meeting, with all his hair blown out by the breath of his own
eloquence, and his eyes, most lovely, charming the money out of your
pockets. What do you say to that? Every morning--as Penelope herself
owned to me--there was the man whom the women couldn't do without,
looking on, in effigy, while Miss Rachel was having her hair comb