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UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE.

Dick now appeared to be doing mental arithmetic, the act being really an effort to present to himself, in an abstract from, how far an argument with a formidable rival ought to be carried, when that rival was his mother's guest. The dead-lock was put an end to by the stamping arrival up the middle of the tranter, who, despising minutiæ on principle, started a theme of his own.

'I assure you, naibours,' he said, 'the heat of my frame no tongue can tell!' He looked around, and endeavoured to give, by a forcible gaze of self-sympathy, some faint idea of the truth.

Mrs. Dewy formed one of the next couple.

'Yes,' she said in an auxiliary tone, 'Reuben always was such a hot man.'

Mrs. Panny implied to correct species of sympathy that such a class of affliction

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