To the dismay and confusion of the little mechanist, these consolatory words had hardly been uttered when a shout was heard in the hall, sufficient to have shaken its foundations; and Mrs. Birkit, turning as pale as death, exclaimed-"Good Heavens! your father is returned!" In order to enable the reader to conceive the distress that this sudden information excited, he must be informed that squire Birkit, of Bear Hall, was supposed to have been safely lodged for a week at a brother squire's, twenty miles off, on a shooting visit; and it was the custom of his terrified family, on those occasions, to exercise themselves on the various employments that he positively interdicted when pre sent. "Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro, And gathering tears and tremblings of distress." Charity Birkit, with fruitless care, threw a shawl over the globes, books, and microscopes; Mrs. Birkit hurried the dismembered watch into her pocket; while little James, James, the printer, hastened out of the room, that he might remove the stains of ink from off his face and clothes. Never did a father's return appear to create less felicity among the members of his family; and Miss Somerville, judging, from the specimen she saw, that they would wish the endearments succeeding his reception to pass without witnesses, took advantage of the hurlyburly to make her parting curtsey and return home. Scarcely had she turned her back on Bear Hall when the formidable master of it strode into the room. He was a gigantic-looking man, attired as a true, not as a fashionable sportsman. From beneath his shaggy brows he cast a ferocious glance around; and after throwing his gaiters in the middle of the room, and his game-bag across Isabella's velvet painting, began, in a thundering voice, what shall be read in the following chapter. СНАР CHAPTER V. 66 Since trifles make the sum of human things, Mrs. II. MORE. "SOH! here's a fine piece of business for a man to come home to! The devil has shook his club over my whole family in my absence, I find! Miss Bell was to have flitted to-night, Charity to have converted the Hall into an academy of Pestalozzi's; and you, madam," turning to his wife, "and that old woman there in the corner, were worthily employed in abetting and counselling your daughter's vagaries." Isabel, with tears, denied any intention of an elopement, though she acknowledged that a lover, the most worthy, and the most most cruelly treated by her father, had availed himself of his absence to take one last, long farewell. Charity could not so easily justify herself; the proofs of her delinquency lay upon the table. "Did I not," exclaimed Mr. Birkit, again raising his voice, "positively lay my commands on you to have no more of this nonsense? What is the use of boys risking their lives with retorts and crucibles, who are not intended for chemists, and learning the names of all the herbs in the Pharmacopoeia, unless they are breeding up for apothecaries? There is James, who can hardly read a line of print but his own, and would be an hour casting up a common account. It is all pride, daughter Charity, and the desire of exhibiting your new-fangled systems of education. Didn't you once call up James and Harry, in the middle of the night, to be questioned, by some of your philosophical travellers, in history, chronology, conchology, and doc tor tor Darwin's new-invented mode of turning blackamoors white? and didn't the poor boys, being awakened out of their first sleep, talk some nonsense, as how diamonds were not precious stones, and explain centripetal force to mean an army of centipedes?" Charity blushed at being thus rudely reprimanded, and Tom Birkit, who had entered during his father's harangue, undertook to intercede for his sister, of whom he was really fond." My dear sir," said he, "you vex poor Charity more than you intend, I am sure. See, she is in tears! Do, dear father, be mild and gentle with the poor girl." 66 "Mild and gentle!" vociferated squire Birkit, in a rage. Why, death and fury! I am mild and gentle; and, hark ye, Tom, if ever you use that word to your father again, I will knock your head and the wall together, to see which is the softest." Tóm dexterously flew on one side, as if VOL. III. I he |