prove that we
could put ourselves in a good posture for defence."

"If I had my way," announced Major Hymen, "every woman in England
should have a dozen children at least."

"What a man!" said Miss Pescod afterwards to Miss Sally Tregentil,
who had dropped in for a cup of tea.

And yet the Major was a bachelor. They could not help wondering a
little.

"With two such names, too!" mused Miss Sally. "'Solomon' and
'Hymen'; they certainly suggest--they would almost seem to give
promise of, at least, a _dual_ destiny."

"You mark my words," said Miss Pescod. "That man has been crossed in
love."

"But _who_?" asked Miss Sally, her eyes widening in speculation.
"_Who_ could have done such a thing?"

"My dear, I understand there are women in London capable of
anything."

The Major, you must know, had spent the greater part of his life in
the capital as a silk-mercer and linen-draper--I believe, in the
Old Jewry; at any rate, not far from Cheapside. He had left us at
the age of sixteen to repair the fortunes of his family, once
opulent and respected, but brought low by his great-grandfather's
rash operations in South Sea stock. In London, thanks to an
ingratiating manner with the sex on which a linen-draper relies for
patronage, he had prospered, had amassed a competence, and had sold
his business to retire to his native town, as Shakespeare retired to
Stratford-on-Avon, and at about the same period of life.

Had the Major in London been crossed in love? No; I incline to
believe that Miss Pescod was mistaken. That hearts, up there,
fluttered for a man of his presence is probable, nay certain.
In port and even in features he bore a singular likeness to the
Prince Regent. He himself could not but be aware of this, having
heard it so often remarked upon by persons acquainted with his Royal
Highness as well as by others who had never set eyes on him. In
short, our excellent Major may have dallied in his time with the
darts of love; there is no evidence that he ever took a wound.

Within a year after his return he bought back the ancestral home of
the Hymens, a fine house dating from the reign of Queen Anne.
(His great-grandfather had built it on the site of a humbler abode,
on the eve of the South Sea collapse.) It stood at the foot of
Custom House Hill and looked down the length of Fore Street--a
perspective view of which the Major never wearied--no, not even on
hot afternoons when the population took its