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John complied with the request, and when Janet came down to the kitchen, how was she surprised at finding Hannah there, leisurely grinding her coffee, with an innocent look upon her sable face, as if nothing had ever happened. John's raillery, however, loosened her tongue at last, and very minutely she detailed her grievances.
"You ought not to be talking so much, Uncle Matthew!" "Ah, let me talk, John. It's the only comfort I have, and I'll get all the rest I want by and bye. Was it a girl kept you late the night?" "How did you know, Uncle Matthew?" "How did I know!" Uncle Matthew said with raillery. "How would anyone know anything but by using the bit of wit the Almighty God's put in his head.
I have laboured twenty years to arm him against mockery; they will not make him their dupe in a day; for in his eyes ridicule is the argument of fools, and nothing makes one less susceptible to raillery than to be beyond the influence of prejudice.
He's a captain, or was one about a hundred years ago, when he was much younger than he is now." "Don't be so silly! I've a great mind not to tell you at all, but as you haven't whimpered when I pulled your moustache I shall tell you it he, I mean was Captain Reade, of the United States ship Narrangansett. Now!" Then all her raillery vanished in a moment.
"Well," cried he, in a gentle raillery of tone, "my own beloved one! if thy guardian uncle cannot prevail over this wayward fancifulness, so unlike his ingenuous Mary's usual fair dealing with the truth of others. I must call in even a better-accredited pleader, and shall then leave my object, the balance of justice and mercy, in equally beloved hands."
The hearty sincerity of Listz's simple words to me about this misunderstanding, as contrasted with the strangely passionate raillery of the incorrigible lady, made a most pleasing and captivating impression upon me.
Where is that fifty pounds, little girl alive? Out with it. This is the profit. Where is the fifty you staked?" His voice was gay with raillery. She could look him in the face now and prevaricate without any shame or compunction at all. "That fifty pounds that! Why, I used it to buy my ticket for Canada. My husband ought to pay my expenses out to him." He laughed greatly.
Tony eluded reproof with a skill that was altogether baffling. Now, as usual, having said what he wanted to say, he retreated behind a fence of raillery. "You know quite well I didn't mean that," she said indignantly. "What did you mean, then? That I'm not to make love to you?" "It isn't fair of you," she urged. "Not now here." "No, I suppose it isn't," he acknowledged equably.
It was very entertaining to hear him tell a story; but it was very disagreeable to differ with him, either in competition, or in raillery: it is true that at that time there were few persons at the English court who had merited his indignation: Russell was sometimes the subject of his ridicule, but he treated him far more tenderly than he usually did a rival.
He was about forty, and unmarried, and, on account of his amiable, thrifty, and Christianly qualities, was said to be the victim of incessant "cap-setting" by managing mammas and marriageable daughters, and of no little raillery on the part of the men, which he bore with great good nature, safely escaping from each matrimonial snare, and returning joke for joke.
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