Master Muff.—

“—Of two brothers.

See what a grace was seated on that brow;

Hy—Hy—”

“Isn't it something about curls and front?” said Mr. Muff.

Mrs. Muff took this as an affront to her own particular jazey, which was bushily redolent of both; she darted a fierce frown à la Fubsy at the interrogator, that awed him to silence.

Master Muff.—

“A eye like Ma's to threaten and command—”

The subdued master-mason felt the full force of this line, to which his son Guy's appropriate pronunciation and personal stare gave a new reading. Here the juvenile spouter broke down, upon which Mrs. Flumgarten took his voice under her patronage, and having prevailed on him to try a song, the “young idea” began in an excruciating wheeze, as if a pair of bellows had been invited to sing, the following morceau. “More so,” said Mrs. Muff, encouragingly, “because pa said it was almost good enough to be sung a Sundays after Tabernacle.”

There was a little bird,