wauling of rival tabbies; a few rattled pieces of crossed wood, significant of the opposite tempers of the couple now receiving a practical lesson of their differenees, and everybody was occupied, in various ways, in adding to the din and uproar. Mrs. Sykes heard all, but saw nothing. With her face buried between her hands, she sat rocking to and fro on her chair, weeping and lamenting. "That it should come to this!" from time to time she would exclaim, " for a Sykes to be skimmeted. Why was I born to disgrace the family name?" "Now, now!" returned Job, soothingly; "don't take on so, Betsy; we all have our faults. I have mine, you know," continued he, "and if you have been a little too hard upon 'em, now and then, I forgive it-God bless ye!" “What will all the neighbours say?" added she, in a deluge of tears. "Confound their sayings," replied Job, em phatically. "What will Mrs. Stiggs say?" rejoined the not-to-be-comforted dame. "Choke Mrs. Stiggs!" rejoined Job. "What will the Squire say?" returned Mrs. Sykes, turning up her tearful visage imploringly to her husband. "Nothing," added the huntsman, respectfully touching the forelock on his brow. "And Mr. Hardy?" said she, bursting out afresh at the thought of retrograding in the good opinion of that angelic, little spectacled individual. “Pooh, pooh!” said Job, "he'll never think or say a word against anybody or anything." "And our dear young Squire?" continued the excited dame, "What will that cherub of a boy—at least, I should say man now—think of my bringing such a stain on the family honour of the Sykes's?" "The young Squire will only laugh at the frolic," responded the huntsman. 66 Laugh!" repeated Mrs. Sykes, bitterly. "Oh! Job, that I ever should live to be laughed at!" "Fal-the-ral-tit!" returned the huntsman, derisively. "Don't you laugh and sneer at Mrs. Stiggs and many other of your neighbours, and do ye suppose they, one and all, don't laugh, sneer, and tittle-tattle of you in return? Betsy, Betsy," continued the matterof-fact and sensible Job, "never deceive yourself; it's the worst kind of deception you can be guilty of. Believe what I say, and let this skimmeting Mrs. Sykes groaned. "Let this skimmeting," repeated the huntsman, "convince ye that what is said and done under your own roof is by no means a sealed secret. People are too apt to consider they wear a mask through which no eye can peep, while their neighbours only hide their faces under muslin. "Tis a mistake," continued Job, "and, as much as we may laugh at others, rest assured, we get as much laughed at." These words sunk into Mrs. Sykes's brain like pebbles in a brook, and she began to feel her own inferiority of judgment. "I wonder what they're at now?" said the huntsman, as loud "Hurrahs " quickly suc ceeded each other from without. Mrs. Sykes could not refrain from taking a stolen peep also at the proceedings; and as she did so, she saw the body of the post-chaise swinging by ropes in the air, and soon afterwards fixed in the great forked branches of the old chesnut tree, amid the cheers and whooping of the crowd. At this juncture, Mrs. Sykes entertained a shrewd suspicion that Edward Dixon was the leading spirit in the skimmeting; and although she thought so then, and ever afterwards, she maintained a rigid and unbroken silence concerning her mistrust. |