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CHAPTER XIII.

"To arms! to arms!' the bright Virago cries,
And swift as lightning to the combat flies.
All side in parties"..

Rape of the Lock.

"I THOUGHT I might safely trust you," said Mrs. Chandos, addressing her husband on entering her nursery. "You're much fitter to faddle over a baby than I am. Well, little Kit-your eyes are as bright and wicked as ever, I see. What a naughty child you were to go tumbling into the river! Mr. Chandos, what a capital nursery-maid you do make-only the child's nightcap's on wrong side before! Did you put it on yourself?"

He had carried his child in his arms to the house with sensations so utterly overwhelming

that he had not spoken a word. With all the greediness of passion over its object thus restored, he had, indeed, refused to surrender his child to the nursemaid; he had kept her upon his lap whilst her clothes were changed; he had himself tied on the little night-cap; had himself held her wrapped up in a shawl, and warming her in his bosom while her bed was made hot; had laid her in it; arranged her tiny pillow-everything with an intensity of feeling which left no room for reflection, and he now sat by her, with all the seriousness-the almost melancholy, of profound joy upon his countenance.

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She lay in her bed, her little bright, glistening eyes fixed upon his face; and by that mysterious sympathy which united them, seeming to share his feelings, though it was impossible she should understand them.

He had been too entirely overcome to be able, as was his custom, to meet his wife's attacks with good-humoured raillery; he made no answer to what she said, but looking up at her, tried to smile, and felt that their hearts were more uncongenial than ever.

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Lucilla, it must be confessed, was usually extremely good-humoured, she had too much levity to be easily vexed; but nothing tried her so much as silence. When she got no answer from Mr. Chandos, she always felt it as a mark of secret contempt, and she thought it her right to feel contempt for him—not his for her.

Anything the least approaching to contempt as directed to herself she felt to be the utmost possible injustice and no one can easily endure injustice; so she went on, with a little more sarcasm in her tone,—

"While you were busy dressing the child and playing Susan's part, I loitered a little behind to perform what was properly yours-to thank the child who had half drowned himself to save her. Though he was but a boy — and a poor boy—I thought somebody might have, at least, the grace to do that, so I offered him a guinea.”

"You didn't?"

"But I did. I don't quite lose my presence of mind. However, the boy's a curious boy-he wouldn't take it; the first of his sex that ever I

VOL. II.

R

met with who refused to be paid for anything when they could get paid. There's a difference between him and some people I know, however; for to accept a service without offering an acknowledgment is not exactly the same as refusing an acknowledgment after doing a service."

"Your reproof is just, Lucilla. I had no presence of mind-I forgot every thing," said Mr. Chandos, gently. "But who is this poor boy who refuses money which he has so justly earned?"

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Why, who do you think? Do you remember the child little Kit was so good-natured to ages ago, when we were all assembled in full committee here, years and years since. I never thought much about him from that time to this; but he went on living with Calantha, it seems, and has been in the house all this time, and not allowed to come down and make one among the children. I do think the pride of Emma and Julia is insupportable. I can't think what they take themselves for?" said the beautiful Mrs. Chandos, who, from the height of her husband's ancient descent and highly aristocratical position in so

ciety, looked down with a little disdain upon the somewhat nouveaux riches who had married her sisters.

"I can't think what right they have to look down upon people."

"As much as any body else has, I suppose," said her husband, quietly.

"And why Gideon is not good enough to be a playfellow for their children, forsooth! Absurd prejudice! But I'll set them right about it."

"I don't think the prejudice quite so absurd as you seem to do," said Mr. Chandos, quietly; "and I wish, Lucilla, you would let your sisters manage their families in their own way. Depend upon it, you will not make this boy acceptable in their sight by taking up the cudgels for him in your usual enthusiastic way. It is the most difficult thing in the world to decide what is right—still more what is kindest to be done by children in his perplexing situation."

"Well," said she, provoked, "I believe there is not one thing in the world that I could do or say that you would not contradict me in. I

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