chamber of her heart. Yet I should never have imagined that Sinfire was the enchantress who would have the key to that door: there is, for all any one can see, absolutely no community of feeling or experience between mother and her.
John, being at any rate a man, is a less remarkable case; but even he outstrips anticipation. John has always seemed to me the ideal of an English country squire: he would be just the man for a master of fox-hounds,—a man able and willing to browbeat everybody, to domineer and be choleric, and yet to command the hearty good will of all, owing to their recognition of his unalterable honesty and child-like kindness of heart. John did not learn much at school, and he came to an untimely end in college; but where I made one friend he made twenty; and his truest friend was the one to whom, at the outset of their acquaintance, he administered the most terrible thrashing. John loves eating and drinking as much as any man, but he would starve himself for a week rather than dock his mare of a peck of oats or his dogs of a biscuit. John has absurd, undemocratic theories, and fancies himself the superior of every one he meets, because he is the heir of the Mainwarings; but there is one person before whom he humbles himself, and that is the English groom in his stables. John would face a dozen foot-pads with a heart of trust, and would probably get the best of them; but in the presence of a petticoat (an embroidered one, at least) his big voice sinks to a quaver and a rumble and his haughty glance quails and falls. In view of this latter fact, it would not have been surprising if Sinfire (who does wear an embroidered one) had put him to flight; but her distinction consisted in having inspired him with a new spirit, in virtue of which he is rapidly emerging from barbarism into civilization. Instead of talking with a hostler, and roaring out an oath when his humor is crossed, he attempts polite conversation (God bless him!) and courteous irony; instead of drinking himself crimson after dinner, he limits himself to six glasses, and every one a toast; instead of starting off betimes in the morning on a lonely hunting or horseback expedition, he dawdles anxiously about the veranda, in a comical anxiety to secure, in not too barefaced a manner, the monopoly of "Cousin Sinfire's" companionship. This would be less remarkable were John ordinarily susceptible; but I can vouch for it that every good-looking girl within a radius of fifty miles has been tried upon him, with the result only of putting him to flight. Cousin Sinfire, therefore, must wield some spell unknown to the common run of young ladies.
Indeed, I am myself not insensible to a peculiar quality in her, which I can conceive to be very attractive to many or to most people.
