me like that sort of game." And here comes a fit of coughing, over which mamma ejaculates her sympathy.
"Kick—kick—killin' myself!" gasps out the captain, "know I am. No man can lead my life, and stand it. Dyin' by inches! Dyin' by whole yards, by Jo—ho—hove, I am!" Indeed, he was as bad in health as in morals, this graceless captain.
"That man of Lovel's seems a d insolent beggar," he presently and ingenuously remarks.
"O uncle, you mustn't say those words!" cries niece Cissy.
"He's a man, and may say what he likes, and so will I, when I'm a man. Yes, and I'll say it now, too, if I like," cries Master Popham.
"Not to give me pain, Popham? Will you?" asks the governess.
On which the boy says,—"Well, who wants to hurt you, Miss Prior?"
And our colloquy ends by the arrival of the man of the house from the city.
What I have admired in some dear women is their capacity for quarrelling and for reconciliation. As I saw Lady Baker hanging round her son's neck, and fondling his scanty ringlets, I remembered the awful stories with which in former days she used to entertain us regarding this reprobate. Her heart was pincushioned with his filial crimes. Under her chesnut front her ladyship's real head of hair was grey, in consequence of his iniquities. His precocious appetite had devoured the greater part of her jointure. He had treated her many dangerous illnesses with indifference: had been the worst son, the worst brother, the most ill-conducted school-boy, the most immoral young man—the terror of households, the Lovelace of garrison towns, the perverter of young officers; in fact, Lady Baker did not know how she supported existence at all under the agony occasioned by his crimes, and it was only from the possession of a more than ordinarily strong sense of religion that she was enabled to bear her burden.
The captain himself explained these alternating maternal caresses and quarrels in his easy way.
"Saw how the old lady kissed and fondled me?" says he to his brother-in-law. "Quite refreshin', ain't it? Hang me, I thought she was goin' to send me a bit of sweetbread off her own plate. Came up to my room last night, wanted to tuck me up in bed, and abused my brother to me for an hour. You see, when I'm in favour, she always abuses Baker; when he's in favour she abuses me to him. And my sister-in-law, didn't she give it my sister-in-law! Oh! I'll trouble you! And poor Cecilia—why hang me, Mr. Batchelor, she used to go on—this bottle's corked, I'm hanged if it isn't—to go on about Cecilia, and call her. . . . Hullo!"
Here he was interrupted by our host, who said sternly—
"Will you please to forget those quarrels, or not mention them here? Will you have more wine, Batchelor?"
And Lovel rises, and haughtily stalks out of the room. To do Lovel justice, he had a great contempt and dislike for his young brother-in-law, which, with his best magnanimity, he could not at all times conceal.
