new in commendation, but she readily echoed whatever he chose to assert, and it was finally settled between them without any difficulty that his equipage was altogether the most complete of its kind in England, his carriage the neatest, his horse the best goer, and himself the best coachman.  “You do not really think, Mr. Thorpe,” said Catherine, venturing after some time to consider the matter as entirely decided, and to offer some little variation on the subject, “that James’s gig will break down?”

“Break down!  Oh!  Lord!  Did you ever see such a little tittuppy thing in your life?  There is not a sound piece of iron about it.  The wheels have been fairly worn out these ten years at least —­ and as for the body!  Upon my soul, you might shake it to pieces yourself with a touch.  It is the most devilish little rickety business I ever beheld!  Thank God! we have got a better.  I would not be bound to go two miles in it for fifty thousand pounds.”

“Good heavens!” cried Catherine, quite frightened.  “Then pray let us turn back; they will certainly meet with an accident if we go on.  Do let us turn back, Mr. Thorpe; stop and speak to my brother, and tell him how very unsafe it is.”

“Unsafe!  Oh, lord!  What is there in that?  They will only get a roll if it does break down; and there is plenty of dirt; it will be excellent falling.  Oh, curse it!  The carriage is safe enough, if a man knows how to drive it; a thing of that sort in good hands will last above twenty years after it is fairly worn out.  Lord bless you!  I would undertake for five pounds to drive it to York and back again, without losing a nail.”

Catherine listened with astonishment; she knew not how to reconcile two such very different accounts of the same thing; for she had not been brought up to understand the propensities of a rattle, nor to know to how many idle assertions and impudent falsehoods the excess of vanity will lead.  Her own family were plain, matter-of-fact people who seldom aimed at wit of any kind; her father, at the utmost, being contented with a pun, and her mother with a proverb; they were not in the habit therefore of telling lies to increase their importance, or of asserting at one moment what they would contradict the next.  She reflected on the affair for some time in much perplexity, and was more than once on the point of requesting from Mr. Thorpe a clearer insight into his real opinion on the subject; but she checked herself, because it appeared to her that he did not excel in giving those clearer insights, in making those things plain which he had before made ambiguous; and, joining to this, the consideration that he would not really suffer his sister and his friend to be exposed to a danger from which he might easily preserve them, she concluded at last that he must know the carriage to be in fact perfectly safe, and therefore would alarm herself no longer.  By him the whole matter seemed