100 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



conveyed all .the answer that was heard, to the diffi- 

 culty started by Mr. Bowles. What the exact mean- 

 ing was that lay wrapped up in the blessing whether 

 it was peremptorily favourable to young Leejohn's 

 pecuniary capabilities, or conclusive of some indiffer- 

 ence attaching in toto to the inquiry, has remained 

 dark to the present day. The subject fell, strangled 

 by some larger topic of news-room discussion : and 

 the Chronicle is without a scholiast. 



Two or three days after the appearance of this epi- 

 grammatic announcement in the ' Mercury/ a thick 

 and weighty-looking pacquet, directed in what may 

 for contradistinction's sake, be called ' Square-text/ 

 might be seen lying upon the margin of a breakfast- 

 table on which lay also an admired disorder of news- 

 papers, books, farm accounts, and coffee-cups. The 

 room itself in which the table stood is just worth a 

 moment's notice before anybody comes in. Small, 

 oak-pannelled, and too square for proportion, it was 

 crammed, in every corner and upon every table, with 

 miscellaneous piles of articles which seemed to have 

 grown together by degrees in spite of original in- 

 congruity, and become reconciled at last by lying 

 under the same dust. 'Indoor' and ' out-o'-door ' 

 seemed to contend for the mastery all over the room : 



