idence with every modern improvement.

With the said Miss I continue on terms of hand and gloveship, with
mutual harmless jokes, which would perhaps be as caviare on toast to a
general, though I shall venture to recount some examples.

[Illustration: "OF INCREDIBLE BASHFULNESS AND BUCOLICAL APPEARANCE."]

A certain local young laird, of incredible bashfulness and bucolical
appearance, is a frequent visitor at the manse, and the fervent admirer
of Miss WEE-WEE, who cannot endure the tedium of his society, and is
constantly endeavouring to escape therefrom.

Now his name is Mr CRUM, and I have frequently entertained her in
private by play upon the word, alluding to him as "Mister CRUST,"
"Mister OATCAKE," or "the Scotch Bun," and the like; but he informed me
that he preferred to be addressed as "Balbannock," and upon my inquiring
his reasons for selecting such an alias, he answered that it was because
he inhabited a house of that name.

Whereupon I facetiously requested that he would address myself in future
as "Mister Seventy-nine, Hereford Road, Bayswater," which stroke of wit
occasioned inextinguishable merriment from Miss WEE-WEE, though it did
not excite from the aforesaid laird so much as the smallest simper!

From an ingrained love of teasing, and also the natural desire to
stimulate her appreciation of my superior fertility in small talk and
_l'art de plaire_, I do often slyly contrive to inflict his sole society
upon her--to the huge entertainment of her father and mother, who carry
on the joke by assisting my manoeuvrings; but, although it affords me
a flattering gratification to be plaintively upbraided by Miss WEE-WEE
for my cruel desertion, I am resolved not to persist in such heartless
pranks beyond her natural endurance.

Shortly after my arrival I heard from my host that he was the recipient
of an invitation from a Mister BAGSHOT, Q.C., that he and his son HOWARD
would accompany him to a shooting expedition upon some adjacent moors,
and that, being now immoderately plump, and past his prime as a potshot,
he had requested leave to nominate myself as his _budli_ or substitute,
explaining that I was a young Indian prince of great prowess at every
kind of big games.

Accordingly, to my great delight, it was arranged that I should take his
place.

My young friend HOWARD, beholding me appear at the breakfast-table
arrayed in my short kilt and superincumbent belly-purse with tassels,
did entreat me to c