A very “fine old English gentleman,” was my grand-uncle
      Rumgudgeon, but unlike him of the song, he had his weak points. He was a little, pursy, pompous, passionate semicircular
      somebody, with a red nose, a thick skull, a long purse, and a
      strong sense of his own consequence. With the best heart in the
      world, he contrived, through a predominant whim of contradiction,
      to earn for himself, among those who only knew him superficially,
      the character of a curmudgeon. Like many excellent people, he
      seemed possessed with a spirit of tantalization, which might
      easily, at a casual glance, have been mistaken for malevolence. To every request, a positive “No!” was his immediate answer; but
      in the end—in the long, long end—there were exceedingly few
      requests which he refused. Against all attacks upon his purse he
      made the most sturdy defence; but the amount extorted from him,
      at last, was generally in direct ratio with the length of the
      siege and the stubbornness of the resistance. In charity no one
      gave more liberally or with a worse grace. For the fine arts, and especially for the belles-lettres, he
      entertained a profound contempt. With this he had been inspired
      by Casimir Perier, whose pert little query “A quoi un poete est
      il bon?” he was in the habit of quoting, with a very droll
      pronunciation, as the ne plus ultra of logical wit. Thus my own
      inkling for the Muses had excited his entire displeasure. He
      assured me one day, when I asked him for a new copy of Horace,
      that the translation of “Poeta nascitur non fit” was “a nasty
      poet for nothing fit”—a remark which I took in high dudgeon. His
      repugnance to “the humanities” had, also, much increased of late,
      by an accidental bias in favor of what he supposed to be natural
      science. Somebody had accosted him in the street, mistaking him
      for no less a personage than Doctor Dubble L. Dee, the lecturer
      upon quack physics. This set him off at a tangent; and just at
      the epoch of this story—for story it is getting to be after
      all—my grand-uncle Rumgudgeon was accessible and pacific only
      upon points which happened to chime in with the caprioles of the
      hobby he was riding. For the rest, he laughed with his arms and
      legs, and his politics were stubborn and easily understood. He
      thought, with Horsley, that “the people have nothing to do with
      the laws but to obey them.”

      I had lived with the old gentleman all my life. My parents, in
      dying, had bequeathed me to him as a rich legacy. I believe the
      old villain loved me as his own child—nearly if not quite as well
      as he loved Kate—but it was a dog’s existence that he led me,
      after all. From my first year until my fifth, he obliged me with
      very regular floggings. From five to fifteen, he threatened me,
      hourly, with the House of Correction. From fifteen to twenty, not
      a day passed in which he did not promise to cut me off with a
      shilling. I was a sad dog, it is true—but then it was a part of
      my nature—a point of my faith. In Kate, however, I had a firm
      friend, and I knew it. She was a good girl, and told me very
      sweetly that I might have her (plum and all) whenever I could
      badger my grand-uncle Rumgudgeon, into the necessary consent. Poor girl!—she was barely fifteen, and without this consent, her
      little amount in the funds was not come-at-able until five
      immeasurable summers had “dragged their slow length along.” What,
      then, to do? At fifteen, or even at twenty-one (for I had now
      passed my fifth olympiad) five years in prospect are very much
      the same as five hundred. In vain we besieged the old gentleman
      with importunities. Here was a piece de resistance (as Messieurs
      Ude and Careme would say) which suited his perverse fancy to a T.
      It would have stiffed the indignation of Job himself, to see how
      much like an old mouser he behaved to us two poor wretched little
      mice. In his heart he wished for nothing more ardently than our
      union. He had made up his mind to this all along. In fact, he
      would have given ten thousand pounds from his own pocket (Kate’s
      plum was her own) if he could have invented any thing like an
      excuse for complying with our very natural wishes. But then we
      had been so imprudent as to broach the subject ourselves. Not to
      oppose it under such circumstances, I sincerely believe, was not
      in his power. I have said already that he had his weak points; but in speaking
      of these, I must not be understood as referring to his obstinacy:
      which was one of his strong points—“assurement ce n’ etait pas sa
      foible.” When I mention his weakness I have allusion to a bizarre
      old-womanish superstition which beset him. He was great in
      dreams, portents, et id genus omne of rigmarole. He was
      excessively punctilious, too, upon small points of honor, and,
      after his own fashion, was a man of his word, beyond doubt. This
      was, in fact, one of his hobbies. The spirit of his vows he made
      no scruple of setting at naught, but the letter was a bond
      inviolable. Now it was this latter peculiarity in his
      disposition, of which Kate’s ingenuity enabled us one fine day,
      not long after our interview in the dining-room, to take a very
      unexpected advantage, and, having thus, in the fashion of all
      modern bards and orators, exhausted in prolegomena, all the time
      at my command, and nearly all the room at my disposal, I will sum
      up in a few words what constitutes the whole pith of the story. It happened then—so the Fates ordered it—that among the naval
      acquaintances of my betrothed, were two gentlemen who had just
      set foot upon the shores of England, after a year’s absence,
      each, in foreign travel. In company with these gentlemen, my
      cousin and I, preconcertedly paid uncle Rumgudgeon a visit on the
      afternoon of Sunday, October the tenth,—just three weeks after
      the memorable decision which had so cruelly defeated our hopes. For about half an hour the conversation ran upon ordinary topics,
      but at last, we contrived, quite naturally, to give it the
      following turn:

      CAPT. PRATT. “Well I have been absent just one year.—Just one
      year to-day, as I live—let me see! yes!—this is October the
      tenth. You remember, Mr. Rumgudgeon, I called, this day year to
      bid you good-bye. And by the way, it does seem something like a
      coincidence, does it not—that our friend, Captain Smitherton,
      here, has been absent exactly a year also—a year to-day!”

      SMITHERTON. “Yes! just one year to a fraction. You will remember,
      Mr. Rumgudgeon, that I called with Capt.