rd; pray don't interrupt us now," said Lady Hester, in a
tone of half-peevishness. "I cannot possibly spare you, Mr. Dalton,
at this moment;" and the man of law withdrew, with a most respectful
obeisance.

"You'll forgive me, won't you?" said she, addressing Dalton, with a
glance whose blandishment had often succeeded in a more difficult case.

"And now, papa, we'll adjourn to the drawing-room," said Kate, who
somehow continued to notice a hundred deficiencies in the furniture of a
little chamber she had often before deemed perfect.

Dalton accordingly offered his arm to Lady Hester, who accepted the
courtesy in all form, and the little party moved into the sitting-room;
Nelly following, with an expression of sadness in her pale features,
very unlike the triumphant glances of her father and sister.

"I 'm certain of your pardon, Mr. Dalton, and of yours, too, my dear
child," said Lady Hester, turning towards Kate, as she seated herself
on the stiff old sofa, "when I avow that I have come here determined
to pass the evening with you. I 'm not quite so sure that my dear Miss
Dalton's forgiveness will be so readily accorded me. I see that she
already looks gravely at the prospect of listening to my fiddle-faddle
instead of following out her own charming fancies."

"Oh, how you wrong me, my Lady!" broke in Nelly, eagerly. "If it were
not for my fears of our unfitness our inability," she stammered in
confusion and shame; and old Dalton broke in,

"Don't mind her, my Lady; we 're as well used to company as any family
in the country; but, you see, we don't generally mix with the people one
meets abroad; and why should we? God knows who they are. There was chaps
here last summer at the tables you would n't let into the servants'
hall. There was one I seen myself, with an elegant pair of horses, as
nice steppers as ever you looked at, and a groom behind with a leather
strap round him," and here Mr. Dalton performed a pantomime, by
extending the fingers of his open hand at the side of his head, to
represent a cockade "what d' ye call it in his hat; and who was he, did
you think? 'Billy Rogers,' of Muck; his father was in the canal--"

"In the canal!" exclaimed Lady Hester, in affright.

"Yes, my Lady; in the Grand Canal, an inspector at forty pounds a year,
the devil a farthin' more; and if you seen the son here, with two pins
in his cravat, and a gold chain twisting and turning over his waistcoat,
with his hat on one sid