ly than
Darling--it depends upon them to come and look him up first, and he have
no call to knock at their door without it. Why, it stands to reason,
poor young man! And not a bit hath he eaten from Monday."

"Well, I believe I am right, but I'll ask Miss Dolly. She is that sharp,
she knows everything, and I don't mind what I say to her, when she
thinks that she looks handsome. And it takes a very bad dress, I can
tell you, to put her out of that opinion."

"She is right enough there:" Mrs. Shanks shook her head at her daughter
for speaking in this way. "The ugliest frock as ever came from France
couldn't make her any but a booty. And the Lord knows the quality have
come to queer shapes now. Undecent would be the name for it in our ranks
of women. Why, the last of her frocks she gave you, Jenny, how much did
I put on, at top and bottom, and you three inches shorter than she is!
And the slips they ties round them--oh dear! oh dear! as if that was to
hold them up and buckle them together! Won't they have the groanings by
the time they come to my age?"

CHAPTER XVIII

FRENCH AND ENGLISH

Admiral Darling was now so busy, and so continually called from home by
the duties of his commandership, that he could not fairly be expected
to call upon Mr. Caryl Carne. Yet that gentleman, being rather
sensitive--which sometimes means very spiteful--resented as a personal
slight this failure; although, if the overture had been made, he would
have ascribed it to intrusive curiosity, and a low desire to behold him
in his ruins. But truly in the old man's kindly heart there was no sour
corner for ill blood to lurk in, and no dull fibre for ill-will to feed
on. He kept on meaning to go and call on Caryl Carne, and he had quite
made up his mind to do it, but something always happened to prevent him.

Neither did he care a groat for his old friend Twemlow's advice upon
that subject. "Don't go near him," said the Rector, taking care that
his wife was quite safe out of hearing; "it would ill become me to say
a word against my dear wife's own nephew, and the representative of her
family. And, to the utmost of my knowledge, there is nothing to be said
against him. But I can't get on with him at all. I don't know why. He
has only honored us with a visit twice, and he would not even come to
dinner. Nice manners they learn on the Continent! But none of us wept
when he declined; not even his good aunt, my wife. Though he must have
got a