kness. There was something
I ever liked in the notion of a woman who had got over all the awkward
girlishness of early years, and had that self-possession which habit and
knowledge of the world confer, and knew enough of herself to understand
what she really wished, and where she would really go."

"Like the trade winds," puffed the skipper.

"Then, as regards fortune, they have a decided superiority over
the spinster class. I defy any man breathing,--let him be half
police-magistrate, half chancellor,--to find out the figure of a young
lady's dower. On your first introduction to the house, some kind friend
whispers, 'Go it, old boy; forty thousand, not a penny less.' A few weeks
later, as the siege progresses, a maiden aunt, disposed to puffing, comes
down to twenty; this diminishes again one half, but then 'the money is in
bank stock, hard Three-and-a-Half.' You go a little farther, and as you sit
one day over your wine with papa, he certainly promulgates the fact that
his daughter has five thousand pounds, two of which turn out to be in
Mexican bonds, and three in an Irish mortgage."

"Happy for you," interrupted Power, "that it be not in Galway, where a
proposal to foreclose, would be a signal for your being called out and shot
without benefit of clergy."

"Bad luck to it, for Galway," said the adjutant. "I was nearly taken in
there once to marry a girl that her brother-in-law swore had eight hundred
a year; and it came out afterwards that so she had, but it was for one year
only; and he challenged me for doubting his word too."

"There's an old formula for finding out an Irish fortune," says Power,
"worth, all the algebra they ever taught in Trinity. Take the half of the
assumed sum, and divide it by three; the quotient will be a flattering
representative of the figure sought for."

"Not in the north," said the adjutant, firmly,--"not in the north, Power.
They are all well off there. There's a race of canny, thrifty, half-Scotch
niggers,--your pardon, Doctor, they are all Irish,--linen-weaving,
Presbyterian, yarn-factoring, long-nosed, hard-drinking fellows, that lay
by rather a snug thing now and then. Do you know, I was very near it once
in the north. I've half a mind to tell you the story; though, perhaps,
you'll laugh at me."

The whole party at once protested that nothing could induce them to deviate
so widely from the line of propriety; and the skipper having mixed a fresh
bowl and filled all the glass