s at once. "He's neither handsome, nor
rich, nor any thing."

"Nor any thing!" repeated Mrs. Mervale, laughing. "Well, that's
comprehensive. A young man may be a very respectable young man, and be
a very fair match for a girl without being either handsome or rich;
but if he is positively 'nothing,' why, then, I grant you, it is bad
indeed."

"Oh, I believe he is respectable enough," replied Augusta, carelessly,
for, like most young girls, the word "respectable" did not rank very
high in her vocabulary.

"And if he is not rich, what are they to live on," asked Mrs. Mervale.

"Love and the law, I suppose," replied her daughter, laughing. "He's a
lawyer, is he not Augusta?"

"Oh!" resumed Mrs. Mervale, "he's a son, then, I suppose, of old John
Hazlewood."

"Yes," replied Augusta.

"Then he may do very well in his profession," continued Mrs. Mervale,
"for his father has a large practice I know, and is a very respectable
man. If this is a clever young man, he may tread in his father's
footsteps."

This did not convey any very high eulogium to the young ladies' ears.
That young Robert Hazlewood might be an old John Hazlewood in his turn
and time, did not strike them as a very brilliant future. In fact they
did not think more of the old man than they did of the young one.

Old gentlemen, however, were not at quite such a discount with Mrs.
Mervale as with her daughter and her friend; and she continued to
descant upon the high standing of Mr. Hazlewood the elder, not one
word in ten of which the girls heard, for she, like most old ladies,
once started upon former times, was thinking of the pleasant young
John Hazlewood of early days, who brought back with him a host of
reminiscences, with which she indulged herself and the girls, while
they, their heads full of last night's party and Mary Morton and
Robert Hazlewood, listened as civilly as they could, quite unable to
keep the thread of her discourse, confounding in her history Robert
Hazlewood's mother with his grandmother, and wondering all the while
when she would stop, that they might resume their gossip.

"You visit his sister, Mrs. Constant, don't you?" asked Augusta.

"Yes, we have always visited the Hazlewoods," replied Angila, "but I
am not intimate with any of them. They always seemed to me those kind
of pattern people I dislike."

"Is Mr. Constant well off?" inquired Mrs. Mervale.

"No, I should think not," replied Angila, "from the way in which they