ing. I was obliged to take refuge from her in the conversation of her lovely daughter, who plays the deuce-knows-what, all upon a piano that has a distinct jingle in most of the chords, as if a handful of silver were dancing a jig upon them. And then there was a sandy-haired young lady present—a hand-and-glove friend of little Mary Jones, I presume, who could not help casting admiring glances at your humble servant all the evening, and would have fallen in love at a moment's notice if I had given her half a chance. As it was, she told me she had seen me at a crush at one of Prunelle's confounded low relatives', where I wont to please him, and also somewhere in the streets, I believe. What do you think they call her, Sir? by Jove! you could never guess: 'Columbia;' patriotic, ain't it? Columbia Brown, or Smith, or something."
"Simmons, Columbia Simmons, I know," the old gentleman says, nodding and chuckling. It quite rejuvenates him to listen to the prattle of his nephew. "Ah! ah! you young rogue," the senior adds presently, while the young rogue sips his coffee, and smirks a little complacently behind his old-fashioned mug; "I see how it was; you had it all your own way. If there had been some other youngster present, you would not have thought widow Jones and the rest of them setting their caps for you, aha!"
"Why, for the matter of that," says Mr. Clarence, no ways abashed, "I was not precisely cavalier-seul, you know. There was one Buckhart, or Elkhart, or something of the sort there—a not ill-looking fellow for his station, which I take to be that of a mechanic. But his style of costume; by the lord Harry! Sir. I looked at him with as much curiosity as if he had been a South Sea Islander, and, to say the truth, he regarded me rather cavalierly in turn. He had something wrapped in a handkerchief, which might have been the remains of his dinner for any thing I know, though he had better have left it, in that case, in the passage, instead of on the centre-table in the parlor. Who is he?" Mr. Clarence asks with a short laugh. "Does he do jobs for you in brick and mortar? I fancied his hands looked rather gritty, Sir."
"No, no; not he, but his grandfather did," the great-uncle returns, "Elkhart, the potter; that water-jug was made at his pottery. And
