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your mind, and come with me into the new house. I hear the drawing-room carpets are put down, and I have been anxiously waiting your escort to go and inspect them."

"Ah! you are a-a dear-a dear little soul. A plague take those two-two croaking spinsters!" he continued, as they descended the stairs. "What business have they with my 1-1looks, I wonder."

Notwithstanding these two failures, the sisters did not abandon the siege. They felt the difficulties of the approach, and they began to fear the garrison to be too strong for them; still they ventured upon occasional flying skirmishes, whenever it so chanced the prize betrayed (or they fancied so,) a weak point. They praised the colour of the invariable snuff-brown suit: surely, that was safe ground! they thought. A man would never persist in attiring himself in the same dingy garb for ever, without some good, or fancied reasons for its adoption. Mr. Barton, however, began to suspect some sinister design was lurking under the amiable outwardness of the ladies. Tom was engaged. They could have no designs in that quarter.

"Was it possible they wanted himself?" Such things had been, he knew. Nay, he had

nature.

not lived a rich widower twenty years without having been exposed to attempts of a similar The admiration of the particular, not to say peculiar tint of his garments, was suffered to fall to the ground. But when they proceeded the following day to declare their partiality towards the pungent weed he was in the habit of applying in huge quantities to his nostrils, requesting the favour of "one little pinch," he could no longer be blind to the truth. He had once been within an inch of capture by a wily widow, who approached under cover of his snuffbox; and his escape thus brought so forcibly to his recollection, produced a degree of alarm which impressed him with the absolute necessity of acting decisively in the business; he therefore turned fiercely upon the fair offender, vociferating

By the law-by the law, and by all the snuff that ever was taken, Miss Temple, and p-p-perhaps that's stronger than the 1-1-law, if there's-if there's one-one thing-one thing in the whole world I hate above all others, it is-it is a -it is a snuff-taking y-y-young lady. Gad! Ma'am, I'd as soon-I'd as soon-I'd as soonand my son Mr. Tom, there, will tell you the same, 'fore George! Miss Temple, I'd as soon sit down to dinner with a co-co-cock lobster!"

This was a decisive blow; it even shook the Temples, and they discovered they had no foundation for their building on a crusty old widower. They were not invited to extend their visit beyond the wedding-day; so, as they peevishly wrote to their mother

"Fenny Hollows, in all its hatefulness, 'swamped before them,' as Mrs. Stapleton had positively not given them the smallest chance; and, as for old Barton, he had proved himself to be a greater savage than any they had ever met with, even in Lincolnshire."

CHAPTER XVII.

Conclusion.

THE invitation of Mr. Screw to Barney had considerable temptations in the eyes of that youth. Barney had been accustomed to look up to the ex-butler as a person of wonderful sagacity and knowledge of the world. He was beginning to entertain some doubts on the eligibility of his service in Montague Place. The Jones's kept less company than he thought incumbent on persons of professed gentility" to entertain; and Mr. Screw had elevated his eye-brows with a strong, and disagreeable expression of surprize, on discovering that Barney had placed himself in so plebeian a quarter of the town as the neighbourhood of Russell Square.

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Barney's restless mind again became dissatisfied, and he determined to solicit the confidential advice of Mr. Screw on the subject of a change of abode.

The Jones's, Barney reflected, were objectionable on many points. Their highest attempts at

They consi

style fell far below even his ideas and experience. Their evening parties were unhonoured by as much as a baronet, or a "mi-lady." Their dinners were indifferent, and their general style of housekeeping only so-so. dered it a respectable thing to sport a job equipage-per day; and, as has been shewn, were sometimes reduced to the alternative of employing a hackney coach. In short, a young man of certain expectations, was thrown away in so inferior a situation. Barney felt this, and resolved to disclose his sentiments to Mr. Screw.

His mistresses, and their unintelligible cousins, having gone into the city, for the purpose of securing seats for the latter in a conveyance to their native wilds, was an opportunity which Barney thought too good to lose, and accordingly he set out in quest of "Seven Dials,”—a spot he found with little difficulty; but perceiving no sign by which the house he required was evidenced, he accosted a mountain of mealy man, by profession a baker, and resembling in form and colour nothing so much as one of his own unbaked loaves.

With arms a-kimbo, his ample body filling up entirely the entrance to his shop, stood Mr. Dough; to whom, in his distress, Barney ap

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