y, upon occasion of one of these balls, James
and Thomas, those two old boys, absolutely came into Mrs. Mackenzie's
drawing-room with a bouquet apiece for Miss Rosey; and there was a fine
laughing.

"Oh, you little Susanna!" says James, after taking his usual payment;
"now go and pay t'other elder." Rosey did not quite understand at first,
being, you see, more ready to laugh at jokes than to comprehend them:
but when she did, I promise you she looked uncommonly pretty as she
advanced to Colonel Newcome and put that pretty fresh cheek of hers up
to his grizzled moustache.

"I protest I don't know which of you blushes the most," chuckles James
Binnie--and the truth is, the old man and the young girl had both hung
out those signals of amiable distress.

On this day, and as Miss Rosey was to be overpowered by flowers, who
should come presently to dinner but Captain Hoby, with another bouquet?
on which Uncle James said Rosey should go to the ball like an American
Indian with her scalps at her belt.

"Scalps!" cries Mrs. Mackenzie.

"Scalps! Oh law, uncle!" exclaims Miss Rosey. "What can you mean by
anything so horrid?"

Goby recalls to Mrs. Mack, Hook-ee-ma-goosh the Indian chief, whom she
must have seen when the Hundred and Fiftieth were at Quebec, and who had
his lodge full of them; and who used to lie about the barracks so drunk,
and who used to beat his poor little European wife: and presently Mr.
Clive Newcome joins this company, when the chirping, tittering, joking,
laughing, cease somehow.

Has Clive brought a bouquet too? No. He has never thought about a
bouquet. He is dressed in black, with long hair, a long moustache,
and melancholy imperial. He looks very handsome, but as glum as an
undertaker. And James Binnie says, "Egad, Tom, they used to call you
the knight of the woeful countenance, and Clive has just inherited the
paternal mug." Then James calls out in a cheery voice, "Dinner, dinner!"
and trots off with Mrs. Pendennis under his arm; Rosey nestles up
against the Colonel; Goby and Mrs. Mack walk away arm-in-arm very
contentedly; and I don't know with which of her three nosegays pretty
Rosey appears at the ball.

Our stay with our friends at Brussels could not be prolonged beyond
a month, for at the end of that period we were under an engagement to
other friends in England, who were good enough to desire the presence
of Mrs. Pendennis and her suite of baby, nurse, and husband. So we
presently took l