“As you please, Marble; but, now, get yourself in trim to meet another relation; the second you have laid eyes on in this world.”

“Think of that, Miles!  Think of my having two relations!  A mother and a niece!  Well, it is a true saying that it never rains but it pours.”

“You probably have many more, uncles, aunts, and cousins in scores.  The Dutch are famous for counting cousins; and no doubt you’ll have calls on you from half the county.”

I saw that Marble was perplexed, and did not know, at first, but he was getting to be embarrassed by this affluence of kindred.  The mate, however, was not the man long to conceal his thoughts from me; and in the strength of his feelings he soon let his trouble be known.

“I say, Miles,” he rejoined, “a fellow may be bothered with felicity, I find.  Now, here, in ten minutes perhaps, I shall have to meet my sister’s darter—­my own, born, blood niece; a full-grown, and I dare say, a comely young woman; and, hang me if I know exactly what a man ought to say in such a state of the facts.  Generalizing wont do with these near relations; and I suppose a sister’s darter is pretty much the same to a chap as his own darter would be, provided he had one.”

“Exactly; had you reasoned a month, you could not have hit upon a better solution of the difficulty than this.  Treat this Kitty Huguenin just as you would treat Kitty Marble.”

“Ay, ay; all this is easy enough aforehand, and to such scholars as you; but it comes hard on a fellow like myself to heave his idees out of him, as it might be, with a windlass.  I managed the old woman right well, and could get along with a dozen mothers, better than with one sister’s darter.  Suppose she should turn out a girl with black eyes, and red cheeks, and all that sort of thing; I dare say she would expect me to kiss her?”

“Certainly; she will expect that, should her eyes even be white, and her cheeks black.  Natural affection expects this much even among the least enlightened of the human race.”

“I am disposed to do everything according to usage,” returned Marble, quite innocently, and more discomposed by the situation in which he so unexpectedly found himself, than he might have been willing to own; “while, at the same time, I do not wish to do anything that is not expected from a son and an uncle.  If these relations had only come one at a time.”

“Poh, poh, Moses—­do not be quarrelling with your good luck, just as it’s at its height.  Here is the house, and I’ll engage one of those four girls is your niece—­that with the bonnet, for a dollar; she being ready to go home, and the whole having come to the door, in consequence of seeing the chaise driving down the road.  They are puzzled at finding us in it, however, instead of the usual driver.”

Marble hemmed, attempted to clear his throat, pulled down both sleeves of his jacket, settled his black handkerchief to his mind, slily got rid of his quid, and otherwise “cleared ship for action,” as he would have been very apt to describe his own preparations.  After all, his heart failed him, at the pinch; and just as I was pulling up the horse, he said to me, in a voice so small and delicate, that it sounded odd to one who had heard the man’s thunder, as he hailed yards and tops in gales of wind—­