dents of the place actually call upon us (Oh! it makes me smile to think of it) quite comfortably, and as a matter of course, without the slightest notion of the danger they are running, and he, in the most baffling and unaccountable manner, not only forbears to shout "Not at home?" in their faces, or hold the door wide open for them to walk out, but permits mother to return these visits; and though he never goes out himself, does not forbid her partaking of the very mild and temperate amusements offered—croquet, five o'clock tea, and the like. With mother goes Alice, who has, I think, high jinks. Whether papa is tired of living like Diogenes in his tub, or whether he finds it a new sensation to be treated just like any other man, I know not; at any rate a change has come "o'er the spirit of his dream," and it is positively refreshing to see him sinking the misanthrope in the moderately ill-tempered, retiring English gentleman. If he goes on at this rate he will be quite convivial by the time he is sixty, and excellent company at seventy; while at eighty years he will be so jovial that he will be quite sorry to have to go away; he will be beginning to enjoy life so much. (Happy thought! why did not he begin earlier?) It was only yesterday I saw him shake hands and walk down the street with old Mr. Tempest, who has, it appears, a place near Silverbridge; but as the latter has never lived there within the memory of man, papa has had no chance of falling out with him. As it is, he is probably saving up the old gentleman as a bonne bouche to demolish at some future day. Mr. Tempest is an invalid who spends his life in wandering about the world in search of health, thus he has chanced on St. Swithins, which is by the faculty considered salubrious. He has a son, tall, straight, yellow-haired, with brave blue eyes that might belong to us Adairs. He looks nice, but neither Jack nor I have ever spoken to him yet.
St. Swithins is a dull little place, but none the less does that pretty young woman, Miss Alice, in all the pomp of her seventeen-
