racterized their present, "to show the gentleman to the Griffin, No.
4."

The stranger smiled as the sound greeted his ears, and he followed
not so much the host as the hostess's spouse into the apartment thus
designated. A young lady, who some eight years ago little thought that
she should still be in a state of single blessedness, and who always
honoured with an attentive eye the stray travellers who, from their
youth, loneliness, or that ineffable air which usually designates the
unmarried man, might be in the same solitary state of life, turned to
the landlady and said,--

"Mother, did you observe what a handsome gentleman that was?"

"No," replied the landlady; "I only observed that he brought no servant"

"I wonder," said the daughter, "if he is in the army? he has a military
air!"

"I suppose he has dined," muttered the landlady to herself, looking
towards the larder.

"Have you seen Squire Mordaunt within a short period of time?" asked,
somewhat abruptly, a little thick-set man, who was enjoying his pipe and
negus in a sociable way at the window-seat. The characteristics of this
personage were, a spruce wig, a bottle nose, an elevated eyebrow,
a snuff-coloured skin and coat, and an air of that consequential
self-respect which distinguishes the philosopher who agrees with the
French sage, and sees "no reason in the world why a man should not
esteem himself."

"No, indeed, Mr. Bossolton," returned the landlady; "but I suppose that,
as he is now in the Parliament House, he will live less retired. It is
a pity that the inside of that noble old Hall of his should not be more
seen; and after all the old gentleman's improvements too! They say
that the estate now, since the mortgages were paid off, is above 10,000
pounds a year, clear!"

"And if I am not induced into an error," rejoined Mr. Bossolton,
refilling his pipe, "old Vavasour left a great sum of ready money
besides, which must have been an aid, and an assistance, and an
advantage, mark me, Mistress Merrylack, to the owner of Mordaunt
Hall, that has escaped the calculation of your faculty,--and the--and
the--faculty of your calculation!"

"You mistake, Mr. Boss," as, in the friendliness of diminutives, Mrs.
Merrylack sometimes styled the grandiloquent practitioner, "you mistake:
the old gentleman left all his ready money in two bequests,--the one to
the College of ----, in the University of Cambridge, and the other to
an hospital in London. I remembe