“I hope so,” said Mr. Chichely, “else he ought not to have married that nice girl we were all so fond of. Hang it, one has a grudge against a man who carries off the prettiest girl in the town.”

“Ay, by God! and the best too,” said Mr. Standish.

“My friend Vincy didn’t half like the marriage, I know that,” said Mr. Chichely. “ He wouldn’t do much. How the relations on the other side may have come down I can’t say.” There was an emphatic kind of reticence in Mr. Chichely’s manner of speaking.