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ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD 198
thousand a year, at the very lowest computation ; and, with the
present rise in wages and house-rent, that calculation can't last very
long. Love ? Attachment ? Look at Frank Maythorn, with his
vernal blushes, his leafy whiskers, his sunshiny laughing face, and
all the birds of spring carolling in his jolly voice ; and old General
Pinwood hobbling in on his cork leg, with his stars and orders, and
leering round the room from under his painted eyebrows. Will my
modest nymph go to Maythorn, or to yonder leering Satyr, who
totters towards her in his white and rouge ? Nonsense. She gives
her garland to the old man, to be sure. He is ten times as rich
as the young one. And so they went on in Arcadia itself, really.
Not in that namby-pamby ballet and idyll world, where they
tripped up to each other in rhythm, and talked hexameters; but
in the real downright no-mistake country—Arcadia—where Tityrus,
fluting to Amaryllis in the shade, had his pipe very soon put out
when Melibceus (the great grazier) performed on his melodious,
exquisite, irresistible cowhorn ; and where Daphne's mother dressed
her up with ribbons and drove her to market, and sold her, and
swapped her, and bartered her like any other lamb in the fair.
This one has been trotted to the market so long now that she knows
the way herself. Her baa has been heard for—do not let us count
how many seasons. She has nibbled out of countless hands ; frisked
in many thousand dances ; come quite harmless away from goodness
knows how many wolves. Ah ! ye lambs and raddled innocents
of our Arcadia! Ah, old Ewe ! Is it of your ladyship this
fable is narrated ? I say it is as old as Cadmus, and man-andmutton-kind.
So, when Philip comes to Beaunash Street, Agnes listens to
him most kindly, sweetly, gently, and affectionately. Her pulse
goes up very nearly half a beat when the echo of his horse's heels
is heard in the quiet street. It undergoes a corresponding depression
when the daily grief of parting is encountered and overcome.
Blanche and Agnes don't love each other very passionately.
If I may say as much regarding those two lambkins, they butt at
each other—they quarrel with each other—but they have secret
understandings. During Phil's visits the girls remain together,
you understand, or mamma is with the young people. Female
friends may come in to call on Mrs. Twysden, and the matrons
whisper together, and glance at the cousins, and look knowing.
" Poor orphan boy !" mamma says to a sister matron. " I am
like a mother to him since my dear sister died. His own home
is so blank, and ours so merry, so affectionate ! There may be
intimacy, tender regard, the utmost confidence between cousins—
there may be future and even closer ties between them—but you
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