erpetual choking
mouthfuls of country breeze for four months' time. Is it not so? Ha!
Again--you want money. Well! Is four golden guineas a week nothing?
My-soul-bless-my-soul! only give it to me--and my boots shall creak
like the golden Papa's, with a sense of the overpowering richness of
the man who walks in them! Four guineas a week, and, more than that,
the charming society of two young misses! and, more than that, your
bed, your breakfast, your dinner, your gorging English teas and lunches
and drinks of foaming beer, all for nothing--why, Walter, my dear good
friend--deuce-what-the-deuce!--for the first time in my life I have not
eyes enough in my head to look, and wonder at you!"

Neither my mother's evident astonishment at my behaviour, nor Pesca's
fervid enumeration of the advantages offered to me by the new
employment, had any effect in shaking my unreasonable disinclination to
go to Limmeridge House. After starting all the petty objections that I
could think of to going to Cumberland, and after hearing them answered,
one after another, to my own complete discomfiture, I tried to set up a
last obstacle by asking what was to become of my pupils in London while
I was teaching Mr. Fairlie's young ladies to sketch from nature. The
obvious answer to this was, that the greater part of them would be away
on their autumn travels, and that the few who remained at home might be
confided to the care of one of my brother drawing-masters, whose pupils
I had once taken off his hands under similar circumstances. My sister
reminded me that this gentleman had expressly placed his services at my
disposal, during the present season, in case I wished to leave town; my
mother seriously appealed to me not to let an idle caprice stand in the
way of my own interests and my own health; and Pesca piteously
entreated that I would not wound him to the heart by rejecting the
first grateful offer of service that he had been able to make to the
friend who had saved his life.

The evident sincerity and affection which inspired these remonstrances
would have influenced any man with an atom of good feeling in his
composition. Though I could not conquer my own unaccountable
perversity, I had at least virtue enough to be heartily ashamed of it,
and to end the discussion pleasantly by giving way, and promising to do
all that was wanted of me.

The rest of the evening passed merrily enough in humorous anticipations
of my coming life with th