O fie!  O strange!  Miss Howe knows nothing of this!  To be sure she won’t look upon her, if this be true!

’Tis true, very true, Mr. Hickman!  True as I am here to tell you so!—­ And he is an ugly fellow too; uglier to look at than me.

Than you, Sir!  Why, to be sure, you are one of the handsomest men in England.

Well, but the wretch she so spitefully prefers to me is a mis-shapen, meagre varlet; more like a skeleton than a man!  Then he dresses—­you never saw a devil so bedizened!  Hardly a coat to his back, nor a shoe to his foot.  A bald-pated villain, yet grudges to buy a peruke to his baldness:  for he is as covetous as hell, never satisfied, yet plaguy rich.

Why, Sir, there is some joke in this, surely.  A man of common parts knows not how to take such gentleman as you.  But, Sir, if there be any truth in the story, what is he?  Some Jew or miserly citizen, I suppose, that may have presumed on the lady’s distressful circumstances; and your lively wit points him out as it pleases.

Why, the rascal has estates in every county in England, and out of England too.

Some East India governor, I suppose, if there be any thing in it.  The lady once had thoughts of going abroad.  But I fancy all this time you are in jest, Sir.  If not, we must surely have heard of him——­

Heard of him!  Aye, Sir, we have all heard of him—­But none of us care to be intimate with him—­except this lady—­and that, as I told you, in spite of me—­his name, in short, is death!—­Death!  Sir, stamping, and speaking loud, and full in his ears; which made him jump half a yard high.

(Thou never beheldest any man so disconcerted.  He looked as if the frightful skeleton was before him, and he had not his accounts ready.  When a little recovered, he fribbled with his waistcoat buttons, as if he had been telling his beads.)

This, Sir, proceeded I, is her wooer!—­Nay, she is so forward a girl, that she wooes him:  but I hope it never will be a match.

He had before behaved, and now looked with more spirit than I expected from him.

I came, Sir, said he, as a mediator of differences.—­It behoves me to keep my temper.  But, Sir, and turned short upon me, as much as I love peace, and to promote it, I will not be ill-used.

As I had played so much upon him, it would have been wrong to take him at his more than half-menace:  yet I think I owe him a grudge, for his presuming to address Miss Howe.

You mean no defiance, I presume, Mr. Hickman, any more than I do offence.  On that presumption, I ask your excuse.  But this is my way.  I mean no harm.  I cannot let sorrow touch my heart.  I cannot be grave six minutes together, for the blood of me.  I am a descendant of old Chancellor Moore, I believe; and should not forbear to cut a joke, were I upon the scaffold.  But you may gather, from what I have said, that I prefer