“’Chaplain, papa?  Lord bless us!”

’"Yes, Miss Mannering, chaplain; is there anything very new in that word?  Had we not a chaplain at the Residence, when we were in India?”

’"Yes, papa, but you was a commandant then.”

’"So I will be now, Miss Mannering, in my own family at least.”

’"Certainly, sir.  But will he read us the Church of England service?”

’The apparent simplicity with which I asked this question got the better of his gravity.  “Come, Julia,” he said, “you are a sad girl, but I gain nothing by scolding you.  Of these two strangers, the young lady is one whom you cannot fail, I think, to love; the person whom, for want of a better term, I called chaplain, is a very worthy, and somewhat ridiculous personage, who will never find out you laugh at him if you don’t laugh very loud indeed.”

’"Dear papa, I am delighted with that part of his character.  But pray, is the house we are going to as pleasantly situated as this?”

’"Not perhaps as much to your taste; there is no lake under the windows, and you will be under the necessity of having all your music within doors.”

’This last coup de main ended the keen encounter of our wits, for you may believe, Matilda, it quelled all my courage to reply.

’Yet my spirits, as perhaps will appear too manifest from this dialogue, have risen insensibly, and, as it were, in spite of myself.  Brown alive, and free, and in England!  Embarrassment and anxiety I can and must endure.  We leave this in two days for our new residence.  I shall not fail to let you know what I think of these Scotch inmates, whom I have but too much reason to believe my father means to quarter in his house as a brace of honourable spies; a sort of female Rozencrantz and reverend Guildenstern, one in tartan petticoats, the other in a cassock.  What a contrast to the society I would willingly have secured to myself!  I shall write instantly on my arriving at our new place of abode, and acquaint my dearest Matilda with the farther fates of—­her

‘Julia Mannering.’

CHAPTER XIX

     Which sloping hills around inclose,
     Where many a beech and brown oak grows
     Beneath whose dark and branching bowers
     Its tides a far-fam’d river pours,
     By natures beauties taught to please,
     Sweet Tusculan of rural easel

          Warton.

Woodbourne, the habitation which Mannering, by Mr. Mac-Morlan’s mediation, had hired for a season, was a large comfortable mansion, snugly situated beneath a hill covered with wood, which shrouded the house upon the north and east; the front looked upon a little lawn bordered by a grove of old trees; beyond were some arable fields, extending down to the river, which was seen from the windows of the house.  A tolerable, though old-fashioned garden, a well-stocked dove-cot, and the possession of any quantity of ground which the convenience of the family might require, rendered the place in every respect suitable, as the advertisements have it, ’for the accommodation of a genteel family.’