perhaps, the cause of his mirth, his companion shared it, and laughed heartily too, till suddenly jumping up, the young lady seized a pair of scissors that lay on the table, and with a hop, skip, and jump, got to the back of Mr. Steady's chair, and stationing herself behind it, said in a voice of authority,

"Eyes front! Mind the word of command, Mr. Jack, or I'll cut your head off, I will, upon my honour."

"What are you going to do, my dear girl?" said the young man, disobeying her commands, and turning himself round to look in her face.

"Do what I bid you," said Patty, "and no harm shall come of it. See here! Don't look so frightened! A fair exchange is no robbery." And so saying, the lively young lady mercilessly enclosed within "the glittering forceps," one of her own ringlets, which she scrupled

not to

"dissever

From her fair head for ever and for ever."

"There now, Jack! look at that," said she; "isn't it a pretty little curl? and dropping it rather upon, than into his hand, she seized the moment in which, of necessity his attention was directed to it, and performed the same feat upon a portion of the young man's chestnut tresses, leaving a very cruel gap just over his left ear.

"Now! what d'ye say to that, master Jack? I am the same funny girl that ever I was, ain't I?" said Patty, skipping round in front of him, and exhibiting her prize exultingly held on high.

"Oh, Patty, this is very foolish! What would your mamma say, if she could know it?" said the young man rising, and looking very much as if he were disposed to re-exchange the tokens by dint either of stratagem or force. "Come, be a good girl, and throw it away. A fine, tall, young lady as you are now, must not play the same sort of tricks that you used to do when a child."

"Throw it away? And will you throw mine away, Jack? What a brate you must be to think of it!" And Patty very coaxingly approached him, holding fast the treasured lock in one hand, while with the other she cleverly caused the one he still held, to curl round two of his fingers. "Now, is it not very pretty, Jack?" said she, looking up in his face with a sort of deprecating smile.

"Yes, to be sure it is; and you are very pretty, too, Patty!" said the youth, fairly beat out of his discretion, and unceremoniously salating the blooming cheek which had placed itself so near him.

At the very moment he did so, and while the not too-greatly incensed Patty was laughing heartily at his audacity, the door opened, and in walked Mr. and Mrs. Allen O'Donagough.

The parties naturally fell into a tableau, and for half a minute not a word was spoken; but Patty soon recovered both her courage and her tongue, and though still blushing a rather deeper tint, perhaps, than the celestial rosy red of which the poet sings, she managed to assume an air of very tolerable nonchalance as she exclaimed,

"So! you are come to look after me, I suppose; but if you look sharp, perhaps you will see, into the bargain, an old friend with a new face."

Mrs. O'Donagough's first emotion was of a mixed nature, being com

pounded of one feeling a little approaching to alarm, and another rather nearer still to satisfaction, at discovering her Patty so evidently, according to her notions, the object of a tender passion, and that, too, from a person so pre-eminently elegant in appearance as Mr. John Steady. But the words of the young lady caused her to examine the countenance of the gentleman more attentively, and, ere she had gazed long, her whole attitude and manner changed; a smile of unmixed satisfaction distended her countenance, she laid her hand upon the arm of her husband, and drawing him a step or two forward stopped within a yard of her old acquaintance, exclaiming in a sort of theatrical whisper, intended to be heard with particular distinctness,

"Look there, O'Donagough! Look there, and tell me what you see.” Mr. O'Donagough's demeanour upon seeing his daughter at a têteà-tête game of romps with a strange man, was by no means so equivocal as that of his lady; for he grew extremely red in the face, and altogether appeared well-inclined to be in a great rage; but the accents of his Barnaby acted like oil on troubled water, his frown relaxed, his colour and his choler became mitigated, and yielding to her gentle influence, he sat about staring the stranger very fixedly in the face.

"Mercy on me! It can't be, can it? It is not possible, to be sure?" Were the sentences he uttered rapidly, but with every appearance of satisfaction, in place of his late displeasure. As soon as the last words were spoken, Patty, who watched him narrowly, placed herself in an attitude similar to that of her mother, upon his other arm, and taking upon herself to answer his wondering inquiries, said,

"Yes, but it is possible, papa; and what is more, it is true. It is our own dear Jack, and no other, you may take my word for it."

"And pray, Miss Patty, how did you find him out?" demanded her father, turning his eyes abruptly from the face of his old acquaintance to that of his daughter, with a look which, though no longer so fierce as before, seemed to express some curiosity, to say the least of it, for a satisfactory explanation. But the forbidden discovery being made and that without any agency of hers, Miss Patty's difficulties were quite at an end, and without affecting any further mystery, she replied,

"How did I find him out? Why in the street to be sure, and never was there such a piece of luck! Wasn't it lucky, Jack? Wasn't you delighted to see me?"

It may be remembered that Mrs. O'Donagough herself had never formed any great intimacy with the young shipmate who now stood before her in a guise so wholly different from any in which she had hither- · to seen him, yet so precisely accordant to the imaginings which her shrewd suspicions had suggested; her feelings, therefore, upon this unexpected rencounter, were simply those of triumphant sagacity; and it was with a chuckling merriment, very little agreeable to the object of it, that she continued to gaze upon him from top to toe. Mr. O'Donagough was perhaps even better pleased still; for not only had the discovery removed sonie exceedingly disagreeable suspicions from his mind, in which his fair daughter was concerned; but, with the keenness of a professional eye, he discerned at a glance, that whatever might have been the cause of the masquerading carried on amongst the crew and passengers of the Atalanta, the young man was decidedly of

that class of society among which he particularly desired to increase his acquaintance, and this unexpected accident seemed to offer a very excellent opportunity for doing so. Thus the only person in the group who felt not perfectly and pleasantly at ease, was poor Jack himself, and he would gladly have given a joint of his little finger to escape answering Patty's affectionate query, and two perhaps, might the sacrifice have placed him clear of the adventure altogether.

"Wasn't it lucky, Jack?" reiterated Patty, "and ain't we famously caught out with our locks of hair exchanged?" And the young lady held up to view the shining trophy she had won, while her eyes directed those of her observant papa and mamma, to the now considerably-deranged curl which the unfortunate youth still held between his fingers. Luckily for him the necessity of immediately replying to Patty's tough query, was obviated by Mr. O'Donagough's saying, as if in consequence of the intelligence conveyed by the tell-tale locks of hair,

"You will not be surprised, sir, if I now think it right to request you will inform me what your real name may be ?”

"Jack is perfectly dumfoundered, poor dear fellow!" exclaimed Patty, laughing; "but I can tell you his name, papa, without plaguing him to speak, if he had rather let it alone. His name is Steady, Mr. John Steady, and that answers to the fork, don't it, mamma?"

"Mr. O'Donagough!" said the young man, appearing suddenly to rouse himself with the energy of a newly-formed resolution, "will you give me leave to speak with you alone for five minutes?"

"Gracious goodness! Can it be about marrying her?" thought Mrs. O'Donagough.

"He is going to pop the question as sure as my name's Patty !" inwardly murmured her daughter, unconsciously clapping her hands in the ecstasy of her heart. Mr. O'Donagough himself, however, felt convinced in a moment, from the tone of voice in which the request was made, that the object of it was not his daughter; yet, nevertheless, he had enough of interest and curiosity in the business to answer readily,

"I shall be very happy to hear, sir, whatever you may be pleased to communicate to me." Which assurance was given in Mr. O'Donagough's most respectful and gentlemanlike manner.

May I attend you to another room, sir?" said the young man.

"Is there any room here, Patty, into which I can show this gentleman?" inquired her father.

"No, that there isn't, papa, except the Perkinses' bedroom, and that's all in a litter, I'll be bound."

"Then we will take a turn in the park, Mr. O'Donagough, if not disagreeable to you?" said the young man, taking up his hat, and deliberately laying down poor Patty's ringlet in its place.

Mr. O'Donagough replied only by a bow, and they left the room together.

As the subject matter of the conversation between Patty and her mother may be easily guessed, it is unnecessary to repeat it, and we will therefore follow the two gentlemen into Hyde Park, where, as by mutual consent, they chose a path the least liable to interruption, when the following conversation took place:

"It can hardly be necessary for me to inform you, Mr. O'Dona

gough," began the young man," that folly and frolic must be pleaded in excuse for my having made your acquaintance under false colours." "I am very glad to hear, my dear sir, that there was no worse cause for it," said the elder gentleman.

66 SIR?"

one.

in very haughty accents was the rejoinder of the younger

"I feared it possible," resumed Mr. O'Donagough, in his best manner, "that some unfortunate affair of honour might have rendered a distant expedition necessary, or at least prudent."

"No, sir. Thank Heaven I have nothing so irreparable on my conscience. The history is briefly this: I was left without father, mother, or any near relative, except a sister still younger than myself, with a large fortune, and a personal guardian, for whom I had conceived a very unjust, but very strong, dislike. For a few years I pursued my studies at Eton, with tolerable propriety I believe; but at the end of that time, my guardian wished me to go to college, while I insisted upon immediately entering the guards, which produced a quarrel, all the faultiness, and all the violence of which belonged wholly to myself. I am sorry to confess, that it was in the mere wantonness of intentionally giving this excellent friend as much pain and anxiety as I could well devise, that I set off for Australia without communicating to him the slightest intimation of my intending to leave England at all; and aware that if I went under my own name, he would be likely to get the intelligence from the newspapers, I had the folly to go out in one ship in the character of a mechanic about to seek my fortune in a new world, and return in another, under the semblance, as you know, of a common sailor belonging to the crew. In the latter case, however, I confided a portion of the truth to the captain and crew-partly because I felt it would be impossible to keep up my assumed character with them, on account of my nautical ignorance, and partly, I own, for the sake of arranging the minor particulars of my passage on a more agreeable footing than I had thought it necessary to do in going out. My name, however, it was not necessary to disclose, and I believe I left the ship at Sheerness, without any thing more being known of me than that I was a lad with a good deal of money, and a roving sort of disposition, which had led me to take a trip that I did not wish to have known. And this, in fact, was the exact truth. I had one confidant, and one only to this thoughtless frolic; my sister knew where I was gone, and from her I received one letter, directed to me according to my instructions, under a feigned name, to the care of a merchant at Sydney. This letter produced a total revolution in all my feelings respecting my guardian. It described his sufferings on my account, as so much more blended with affection than I had ever believed possible, that my heart was softened, and my spirit sobered at once. But it had never occurred to him that I could have committed any greater folly than the merely keeping myself concealed near London; and as my sister, faithful to the promise I had extorted from her, never betrayed her knowledge of my having quitted England, his regret and his sufferings were wholly occasioned by the idea that he had wounded a too sensitive temper by the assumption of more severe authority than he ought to have shown. 'Come back instantly,' wrote my sister, and let him never know the whole extent of your folly.' It was from a wish to follow strictly this advice,

6

that I so cautiously concealed my name and station; and as he has never since my return asked me a single question respecting my absence, I have never yet recurred to the subject. We are, I am happy to say, on the best possible terms; and though I have been for some months of age, I would have been perfectly willing to atone for past rebellion, by entering myself at Oxford. But of this he would not hear, and convinced, as he kindly says, that my former opposition proceeded from a genuine and decided preference for the profession I was so eager to enter, he himself arranged every thing respecting my commission; and I am now, with much better luck than I deserve, in precisely the position I desired, without the mortification of having my boyish escapade bruited from one end of the country to the other. You will perceive, therefore, Mr. O'Donagough, that I have very strong reasons for not wishing to have our meeting on board the Atalanta made known; and I shall hold myself greatly indebted to your courtesy, if you will never, under any circumstances, allude to it, and shall be grateful also, if you will use your influence with the ladies of your family to the same effect."

"Depend upon it, my young friend," replied Mr. O'Donagough, in an accent of much kindness, "depend upon it, your secret is perfectly safe with me; nor do I fear the discretion of either my wife or daughter. Patty is as good a girl as ever lived, and with all her high spirits, is as gentle and obedient as a lamb to every wish that either her mother or I seriously express to her-and for you, dear Jack !— But this familiar appellation must be used no longer. May I ask, sir, if your name be really Steady?"

"No, sir, it is not," replied the young man colouring.

Mr. O'Donagough said no more, and the silence which ensued was rather awkward. It was the young incognito who broke it, by saying with a good-humoured smile,

"I tax your kindness severely perhaps, Mr. O'Donagough, both by my confidence, and by my want of it. I am, I believe, absurdly anxious about this concealment, but the fact is, some of the friends whose good opinion I most highly value, fancy that the interval of my absence has left some traces of improvement with me; and my sister assures me that the general belief is, that I have passed my time in profitable reading, whereas, in truth, I have done nothing, save finding a little leisure to reflect. And though I would not, were I questioned, falsify a single passage in my history; I would rather, at least for the present, that things remained as they are. Therefore, Mr. O'Donagough, if you will have the kindness not to urge the disclosure of my name, I shall really feel it as a great obligation.'

"Is it your wish then, that we should still call you Mr. Steady?" demanded Mr. O'Donagough, gravely.

This was a trying question; for had the young man answered it sincerely, he could only have said that he trusted no circumstances were likely to occur in which there would be any necessity for his being addressed by him or his family at all. But to utter this, was of course impossible; and after a moment's hesitation, he replied, "Yes, sir." Another silence followed, which, like the former one, was at length broken by "Jack."

"I believe, Mr. O'Donagough, that we may now turn back again,"