felt flattered. You turned red, just like a certain vain little lad at our school, who always thinks proper to blush when he gets a rise in the class. For your benefit, Mr. Moore, I’ve been looking up the word “sentimental” in the dictionary, and I find it to mean “tinctured with sentiment.” On examining further, “sentiment” is explained to be thought, idea, notion. A sentimental man, then, is one who has thoughts, ideas, notions; an unsentimental man is one destitute of thought, idea or notion.’

And Mark stopped: he did not smile, he did not look round for admiration. He had said his say, and was silent.

‘Ma foi, mon ami!’ observed Mr. Moore to Yorke; ‘ce sont vraiment des enfants terribles, que les v\oc\tres!’

Rose, who had been listening attentively to Mark’s speech, replied to him:

‘There are different kinds of thoughts, ideas, and notions,’ said she: ‘good and bad. Sentimental must refer to the bad, or Miss Helstone must have taken it in that sense, for she was not blaming Mr. Moore; she was defending him.’

‘That’s my kind little advocate!’ said Moore, taking Rose’s hand.

‘She was defending him,’ repeated Rose, ‘as I should have done had I been in her place, for the other ladies seemed to speak spitefully.’

‘Ladies always do speak spitefully,’ observed Martin. ‘It is the nature of womenites to be spiteful.’

Matthew now, for the first time, opened his lips.

‘What a fool Martin is to be always gabbling about what he does not understand!’

‘It is my privilege, as a freeman, to gabble on whatever subject I like,’ responded Martin.

‘You use it—or, rather, abuse it—to such an extent,’ rejoined the elder brother, ‘that you prove you ought to have been a slave.’

‘A slave! A slave! That to a Yorke, and from a Yorke! This fellow,’ he added, standing up at the table and pointing across it to Matthew—‘this fellow forgets, what every cottier in Briarfield knows, that all born of our house have that arched instep under which water can flow—proof that there has not been a slave of the blood for three hundred years.’

‘Mountebank!’ said Matthew.

‘Lads, be silent!’ exclaimed Mr. Yorke. ‘Martin, you are a mischief-maker: there would have been no disturbance but for you.’

‘Indeed! Is that correct? Did I begin, or did Matthew? Had I spoken to him when he accused me of gabbling like a fool?’

‘A presumptuous fool!’ repeated Matthew.

Here Mrs. Yorke commenced rocking herself—rather a portentous movement with her, as it was occasionally followed, especially when Matthew was worsted in a conflict, by a fit of hysterics.

‘I don’t see why I should bear insolence from Matthew Yorke, or what right he has to use bad language to me,’ observed Martin.

‘He has no right, my lad; but forgive your brother until seventy and seven times,’ said Mr. Yorke soothingly.