thoughts rose in his hot eager brain, he clothed them in words, and told
them to her. Her part of the tete-a-tete was not to talk, but to appear
as if she understood what Pen talked (a difficult matter, for the
young fellow blurted out no small quantity of nonsense), and to look
exceedingly handsome and sympathising. The fact is, whilst he was making
one of his tirades--and delighted, perhaps, and wondering at his own
eloquence, the lad would go on for twenty minutes at a time--the lovely
Emily, who could not comprehend a tenth part of his talk, had leisure to
think about her own affairs, and would arrange in her own mind how they
should dress the cold mutton, or how she would turn the black satin, or
make herself out of her scarf a bonnet like Miss Thackthwaite's new
one, and so forth. Pen spouted Byron and Moore; passion and poetry: her
business was to throw up her eyes, or fixing them for a moment on his
face, to cry, "Oh, 'tis beautiful! Ah, how exquisite! Repeat those
lines again." And off the boy went, and she returned to her own simple
thoughts about the turned gown, or the hashed mutton.

In fact Pen's passion was not long a secret from the lovely Emily or her
father. Upon his second visit, his admiration was quite evident to both
of them, and on his departure the old gentleman said to his daughter, as
he winked at her over his glass of grog, "Faith, Milly darling, I think
ye've hooked that chap."

"Pooh, 'tis only a boy, papa dear," Milly remarked. "Sure he's but
a child." Pen would have been very much pleased if he had heard that
phrase--he was galloping home wild with pleasure, and shouting out her
name as he rode.

"Ye've hooked 'um any how," said the Captain, "and let me tell ye he's
not a bad fish. I asked Tom at the George, and Flint, the grocer, where
his mother dales--fine fortune--drives in her chariot--splendid park and
grounds--Fairoaks Park--only son--property all his own at twenty-one--ye
might go further and not fare so well, Miss Fotheringay."

"Them boys are mostly talk," said Milly, seriously. "Ye know at Dublin
how ye went on about young Poldoody, and I've a whole desk full of
verses he wrote me when he was in Trinity College; but he went abroad,
and his mother married him to an Englishwoman."

"Lord Poldoody was a young nobleman; and in them it's natural: and ye
weren't in the position in which ye are now, Milly dear. But ye mustn't
encourage this young chap too much, for, bedad, Jack C