t a woman to answer reason reasonably.' Saying this,
he looked at his puff of smoke as if it contained more reason.

'I am sure I do not know, sir,' I answered according to a phrase which
has always been my favourite, on account of its general truth: moreover,
he was now our guest, and had right to be treated accordingly: 'I am,
as you see, not acquainted with the ways of women, except my mother and
sisters.'

'Except not even them, my son, said the Counsellor, now having finished
his glass, without much consultation about it; 'if you once understand
your mother and sisters--why you understand the lot of them.'

He made a twist in his cloud of smoke, and dashed his finger through
it, so that I could not follow his meaning, and in manners liked not to
press him.

'Now of this business, John,' he said, after getting to the bottom of
the second glass, and having a trifle or so to eat, and praising our
chimney-corner; 'taking you on the whole, you know, you are wonderfully
good people; and instead of giving me up to the soldiers, as you might
have done, you are doing your best to make me drunk.'

'Not at all, sir,' I answered; 'not at all, your worship. Let me mix
you another glass. We rarely have a great gentleman by the side of our
embers and oven. I only beg your pardon, sir, that my sister Annie (who
knows where to find all the good pans and the lard) could not wait upon
you this evening; and I fear they have done it with dripping instead,
and in a pan with the bottom burned. But old Betty quite loses her head
sometimes, by dint of over-scolding.'

'My son,' replied the Counsellor, standing across the front of the fire,
to prove his strict sobriety: 'I meant to come down upon you to-night;
but you have turned the tables upon me. Not through any skill on your
part, nor through any paltry weakness as to love (and all that stuff,
which boys and girls spin tops at, or knock dolls' noses together), but
through your simple way of taking me, as a man to be believed; combined
with the comfort of this place, and the choice tobacco and cordials. I
have not enjoyed an evening so much, God bless me if I know when!'

'Your worship,' said I, 'makes me more proud than I well know what to
do with. Of all the things that please and lead us into happy sleep
at night, the first and chiefest is to think that we have pleased a
visitor.'

'Then, John, thou hast deserved good sleep; for I am not pleased easily.
But although our famil