“I mean to bring out my best brocade, that I wore at your christening twenty years ago,” said Mrs. Irwine.  “Ah, I think I shall see your poor mother flitting about in her white dress, which looked to me almost like a shroud that very day; and it was her shroud only three months after; and your little cap and christening dress were buried with her too.  She had set her heart on that, sweet soul!  Thank God you take after your mother’s family, Arthur.  If you had been a puny, wiry, yellow baby, I wouldn’t have stood godmother to you.  I should have been sure you would turn out a Donnithorne.  But you were such a broad-faced, broad-chested, loud-screaming rascal, I knew you were every inch of you a Tradgett.”

“But you might have been a little too hasty there, Mother,” said Mr. Irwine, smiling.  “Don’t you remember how it was with Juno’s last pups?  One of them was the very image of its mother, but it had two or three of its father’s tricks notwithstanding.  Nature is clever enough to cheat even you, Mother.”

“Nonsense, child!  Nature never makes a ferret in the shape of a mastiff.  You’ll never persuade me that I can’t tell what men are by their outsides.  If I don’t like a man’s looks, depend upon it I shall never like him.  I don’t want to know people that look ugly and disagreeable, any more than I want to taste dishes that look disagreeable.  If they make me shudder at the first glance, I say, take them away.  An ugly, piggish, or fishy eye, now, makes me feel quite ill; it’s like a bad smell.”

“Talking of eyes,” said Captain Donnithorne, “that reminds me that I’ve got a book I meant to bring you, Godmamma.  It came down in a parcel from London the other day.  I know you are fond of queer, wizardlike stories.  It’s a volume of poems, ‘Lyrical Ballads.’  Most of them seem to be twaddling stuff, but the first is in a different style—­’The Ancient Mariner’ is the title.  I can hardly make head or tail of it as a story, but it’s a strange, striking thing.  I’ll send it over to you; and there are some other books that you may like to see, Irwine—­pamphlets about Antinomianism and Evangelicalism, whatever they may be.  I can’t think what the fellow means by sending such things to me.  I’ve written to him to desire that from henceforth he will send me no book or pamphlet on anything that ends in ism.”

“Well, I don’t know that I’m very fond of isms myself; but I may as well look at the pamphlets; they let one see what is going on.  I’ve a little matter to attend to, Arthur,” continued Mr. Irwine, rising to leave the room, “and then I shall be ready to set out with you.”