I had meanwhile had some private conversation with little Cutler regarding the character of Mrs. Berry. "She's a regular screw," whispered he; "a regular Tartar. Berry shows fight, though, sometimes, and I've known him have his own way for a week together. After dinner he is his own master, and hers when he has had his share of wine; and that's why she will never allow him to drink any." Was it a wicked or was it a noble and honourable thought which came to us both at the same minute, to rescue Berry from his captivity? The ladies, of course, will give their verdict according to their gentle natures; but I know what men of courage will think, and by their jovial judgment will abide. We received, then, the three lost sheep back into our innocent fold again with the most joyous shouting and cheering. We made Berry (who was, in truth, nothing loth) order up I don't know how much more claret. We obliged the Frenchman to drink malgré lui, and in the course of a short time we had poor Whey in such a state of excitement, that he actually volunteered to sing a song, which he said he had heard at some very gay supper-party at Cambridge, and which begins : "A pye sat on a pear-tree, Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, heigh-ho!" Fancy Mrs. Berry's face as she looked in, in the midst of that Bacchanalian ditty, when she saw no less a person than the Rev. Lemuel Whey carolling it! "Is it you, my dear?" cries Berry, as brave now as any Petruchio. "Come in, and sit down, and hear Whey's song." "Lady Pash is asleep, Frank," said she. "Well, darling! that's the very reason. Give Mrs. Berry a glass, Jack, will you?" "Would you wake your aunt, sir?" hissed out madam. “Never mind me, love! I'm awake, and like it!" cried the venerable Lady Pash from the salon. "Sing away, gentlemen!" At which we all set up an audacious cheer; and Mrs. Berry flounced back to the drawing-room, but did not leave the door open, that her aunt might hear our melodies. Berry had by this time arrived at that confidential state to which a third bottle always brings the wellregulated mind; and he made a clean confession to Cutler and myself of his numerous matrimonial annoyHe was not allowed to dine out, he said, and He ances. but seldom to ask his friends to meet him at home. never dared smoke a cigar for the life of him, not even in the stables. He spent the mornings dawdling in eternal shops, the evenings at endless tea-parties, or in reading poems or missionary tracts to his wife. He was compelled to take physic whenever she thought he looked a little pale, to change his shoes and stockings whenever he came in from a walk. "Look here," said he, opening his chest, and shaking his fist at Dobus; "look what Angelica and that infernal Dobus have brought me to." I thought it might be a flannel waistcoat into which madam had forced him: but it was worse : I give you my word of honour it was a pitch-plaster! We all roared at this, and the doctor as loud as any one; but he vowed that he had no hand in the pitchplaster. It was a favourite family remedy of the late apothecary, Sir George Catacomb, and had been put on by Mrs. Berry's own fair hands. When Anatole came in with coffee, Berry was in such high courage, that he told him to go to the deuce with it; and we never caught sight of Lady Pash more, except when, muffled up to the nose, she passed through the salle-à-manger to go to her carriage, in which Dobus and the parson were likewise to be transported to Paris. "Be a man, Frank," says she, "and hold your own" for the good old lady had taken her nephew's part in the matrimonial business "and you, Mr. Fitz-Boodle, come and see him often. You're a good fellow, take old one-eyed Callipash's word for it. Shall I take you to Paris?" Dear, kind Angelica, she had told her aunt all I said! "Don't go, George," says Berry, squeezing me by the hand. So I said I was going to sleep at Versailles that night; but if she would give a convoy to Jack Butts, it would be conferring a great obligation on him; with which favour the old lady accordingly complied, saying to him, with great coolness, "Get up and sit with John in the rumble, Mr. What-d'ye-call-'im." The fact is, the good old soul despises an artist as much as she does a tailor. Jack tripped to his place very meekly; and "Remember Saturday," cried the doctor; and "Don't forget Thursday," exclaimed the divine, - "a bachelors' party, you know." And so the cavalcade drove thundering down the gloomy old Avenue de Paris. The Frenchman, I forgot to say, had gone away exceedingly ill long before; and the reminiscences of Thursday" and "Saturday" evoked by Dobus and Whey, were, to tell the truth, parts of our conspiracy: for inthe heat of Berry's courage, we had made him promise to dine with us all round en garçon; with all except Captain Goff, who "racklacted" that he was engaged every day for the next three weeks: as indeed he is, to a thirty-sous ordinary which the gallant officer frequents, when not invited elsewhere. Cutler and I then were the last on the field; and though we were for moving away, Berry, whose vigour had, if possible, been excited by the bustle and colloquy in the night air, insisted upon dragging us back again, and actually proposed a grill for supper! We found in the salle-à-manger a strong smell of an extinguished lamp, and Mrs. Berry was snuffing out the candles on the sideboard. "Hullo, my dear!" shouts Berry: "easily, if you please! we've not done yet! "Not done yet, Mr. Berry!" groans the lady, in a hollow, sepulchral tone. "No, Mrs. B., not done yet. We are going to have some supper, ain't we, George?" "I think it's quite time to go home," said Mr. FitzBoodle (who, to say the truth, began to tremble himself). "I think it is, sir; you are quite right, sir; you will pardon me, gentlemen, I have a bad headache, and will retire." Good-night, my dear!" said that audacious Berry. "Anatole, tell the cook to broil a fowl and bring some wine." If the loving couple had been alone, or if Cutler had not been an attaché to the embassy, before whom she was afraid of making herself ridiculous, I am confident that Mrs. Berry would have fainted away on the spot; and that all Berry's courage would have tumbled down lifeless by the side of her. So she only gave a martyrised look, and left the room; and while we partook of the very unnecessary repast, was good enough to sing some hymn tunes to an exceedingly slow movement in the next room, intimating that she was awake, and that, though suffering, she found her consolations in religion. These melodies did not in the least add to our friend's courage. The devilled fowl had, somehow, no devil in it. The champagne in the glasses looked exceedingly flat and blue. The fact is, that Cutler and I were now both in a state of dire consternation, and soon made a move for our hats, and lighting each a cigar in the hall, made across the little green where the Cupids and nymphs were listening to the dribbling fountain in the dark. "I'm hanged if I don't have a cigar too!" says Berry, rushing after us; and accordingly putting in his pocket a key about the size of a shovel, which hung by the little handle of the outer grille, forth he sallied, and joined us in our fumigation. He stayed with us a couple of hours, and returned homewards in perfect good spirits, having given me his word of honour he would dine with us the next day. He put in his immense key into the grille, and unlocked it; but the gate would not open: it was bolted within. He began to make a furious jangling and ringing at the bell; and in oaths, both French and English, called upon the recalcitrant Anatole. After much tolling of the bell, a light came cutting across the crevices of the inner door; it was thrown open, and a figure appeared with a lamp, - a tall, slim figure of a woman, clothed in white from head to foot. "Re It was Mrs. Berry, and when Cutler and I saw her, we both ran away as fast as our legs could carry us. Berry, at this, shrieked with a wild laughter. member to-morrow, old boys," shouted he, - "six o'clock;" and we were a quarter of a mile off when the gate closed, and the little mansion of the Avenue de Paris was once more quiet and dark. The next afternoon, as we were playing at billiards, Cutler saw Mrs. Berry drive by in her carriage; and |