" said I, "did you ever take lessons in elocution?"

"Not directly," said the postillion; "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 postillion; "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 postillion.

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

"May my leg always ache, if I do," said the postillion, patting his leg
with his hand; "will you persuade me that this young man has never been
at college?"

"I have never been at college, but--"

"Ay, ay," said the postillion; "but--"

"I have been to the best schools in Britain, to say nothing of a
celebrated one in Ireland."

"Well, then, it comes to the same thing," said the postillion; "or
perhaps you know more than if you had been at college--and your
governor?"

"My governor, as you call him," said I, "is dead."

"And his borough interest?"

"My father had no borough interest," said I; "had he possessed any, he
would perhaps not have died as he did, honourably poor."

"No, no," said the postillion; "if he had had borough interest, he
wouldn't have been poor, nor honourable, though perhaps a right
honourable. However, with your grand education and genteel manners, you
made all right at last by persuading this noble young gentlewoman to run
away from boarding-school with you."

"I was never at boarding-school," said Belle, "unless you call--"

"Ay, ay," said the postillion, "boarding-school is vulgar, I know: I beg
your pardon, I ought to have called it academy, or by some other much
finer name--you were