y, who had rather reluctantly joined the
party--for she was a martyr to ailments--was somewhat grudgingly
admitted by Sally to be a comfortable sort of old thing enough, if
only she didn't "goozle" over you so. She had no _locus standi_ for
goozling, whatever it was; for had not Sally as good as told her son
that she didn't want to marry him or anybody else? If you ask us what
would be the connecting link between Sally's attitude towards the
doctor and the goozlings of a third party, we have no answer ready.

No; Sally went to bed as wise as ever--so she afterwards told the
fossil Major--at the end of the evening. She had enjoyed herself
immensely, though the simple material for rapture was only foursquare
Halma played by the four acuter intelligences of the six, and draughts
for the goozler and the fossil. But then Sally had a rare faculty for
enjoying herself, and she was perfectly contented with only one
admirer to torment, though he was only old Prosy, as she called him,
but not to his face. She was jolly glad mother had put on her
maroon-coloured watered silk with velvet facings, because you couldn't
deny that she looked lovely in it. And as for Mr. Fenwick, he looked
just like Hercules and Sir Walter Raleigh, after being out skating all
day long in the cold. And Sally's wisdom had not been in the least
increased by what was, after all, only a scientific experiment on poor
Mr. Fenwick's mental torpor when her mother, the goozler and old Prosy
having departed, got out her music to sing that very old song of hers
to him that he had thought the other day seemed to bring back a sort
of memory of something. Was it not possible that if he heard it often
enough his past might revive slowly? You never could tell!

So when, on Boxing Day morning, Sally's mother, who had got down early
and hurried her breakfast to make a dash for early prayer at St.
Satisfax, looked in at her backward daughter and reproached her, and
said there was the Major coming down, and no one to get him his
chocolate, she spoke to a young lady who was serenely unprepared for
any revelations of a startling nature, or, indeed, any revelations at
all. Nor did getting the Major his chocolate excite any suspicions.

So Sally was truly taken aback when the old gentleman, having drunk
his chocolate, broke a silence which had lasted since a brief and
fossil-like good-morning, with, "Well, missy, and what do _you_ say
to the idea of a stepfather?" But not imm