--there we find
ourselves alive and kicking, forty couple footing it on the green,
and choosing, according to our tastes, reels, jigs, minuets, or
bumpkins. 'Spose then, that I have handed you down to the bottom of
five-and-twenty couple at a country-dance, to the tune of Sir Roger
de Coverley, Morgiana in Ireland, Petronella, or the Triumph; and,
notwithstanding our having sucked a couple of oranges a-piece, we are
both quite in a broth of perspiration. Very good--so says I to you,
making a genteel bow, 'Do you please to walk aside, and cool yourself in
them there green arbours, and I will be with you as quick as directly,
with a glass of lemonade or cherry brandy?' So says you to me, dropping
a curtsey _a la mode_, 'With ineffable pleasure, sir;' and away you
trip into the shade like a sunbeam.

"'Now, Lucy, my love, take a good look of that picture. That is you,
'spose, seated on the turf, a _leetle_ behind the pillar dedicated
to Apollar; and you, blooming like a daffodilly in April, are waiting
with great thirst, and not a little impatience, for my promised
appearance, from the sign of the Hen and Chickens, with the cordials,
and a few biscuits on a salver--when, lo! an old bald-pated, oily-faced,
red-nosed Cameronian ranter, whom by your elegant negligee capering you
have fairly danced out of his dotard senses, comes pawing up to you like
Polito's polar bear, drops on his knees, and before you can avert your
nose from a love-speech, embalmed in the fumes of tobacco and purl, the
hoary villain has beslobbered your lily-white fingers, and is protesting
unalterable affection, at the rate of twelve miles an hour, inclusive of
stoppages. Now, Lucy, love, did you ever,--say upon your honour,--did
you ever witness such a spectacle of humanity? Tell me now?

"'Very well. Now, love, take a peep down the avenue, and yon is me, yon
tight, handsome little figure, with the Spanish cap and cloak, attended
by a trusty servant in the same costume, to whom I am pointing where he
is to bring the cherry-brandy; when, lo! we perceive the hideous
apparition!--and straightway rushing forward, like two tigers on a
jackass, we seize the wigless dotard, and, calling for a blanket, the
whole respectable company of forty couples and upwards, come crowding to
the spot, and lend a willing hand in rotation, four by four, in tossing
Malachi, the last of the lovers, till the breath of life is scarcely
left in his vile body.

"'Now Lucy,' says