les, aunts, and cousins in scores. The
Dutch are famous for counting cousins; and no doubt you'll have calls on
you from half the county."

I saw that Marble was perplexed, and did not know, at first, but he was
getting to be embarrassed by this affluence of kindred. The mate, however,
was not the man long to conceal his thoughts from me; and in the strength
of his feelings he soon let his trouble be known.

"I say, Miles," he rejoined, "a fellow may be bothered with felicity, I
find. Now, here, in ten minutes perhaps, I shall have to meet my sister's
darter--my own, born, blood niece; a full-grown, and I dare say, a comely
young woman; and, hang me if I know exactly what a man ought to say in
such a state of the facts. Generalizing wont do with these near relations;
and I suppose a sister's darter is pretty much the same to a chap as his
own darter would be, provided he had one."

"Exactly; had you reasoned a month, you could not have hit upon a better
solution of the difficulty than this. Treat this Kitty Huguenin just as
you would treat Kitty Marble."

"Ay, ay; all this is easy enough aforehand, and to such scholars as you;
but it comes hard on a fellow like myself to heave his idees out of him,
as it might be, with a windlass. I managed the old woman right well, and
could get along with a dozen mothers, better than with one sister's
darter. Suppose she should turn out a girl with black eyes, and red
cheeks, and all that sort of thing; I dare say she would expect me to
kiss her?"

"Certainly; she will expect that, should her eyes even be white, and her
cheeks black. Natural affection expects this much even among the least
enlightened of the human race."

"I am disposed to do everything according to usage," returned Marble,
quite innocently, and more discomposed by the situation in which he so
unexpectedly found himself, than he might have been willing to own;
"while, at the same time, I do not wish to do anything that is not
expected from a son and an uncle. If these relations had only come one
at a time."

"Poh, poh, Moses--do not be quarrelling with your good luck, just as it's
at its height. Here is the house, and I'll engage one of those four girls
is your niece--that with the bonnet, for a dollar; she being ready to go
home, and the whole having come to the door, in consequence of seeing the
chaise driving down the road. They are puzzled at finding us in it,
however, instead of the usual driver."

Marb