What I said may be one day matter for Major Dalrymple's memoirs, if he ever writes them; but for my part I have not the least idea.
I only know that while I was yet speaking he called over Mrs.Dal, who, in a frenzy of joy, seized me in her arms and embraced me.

After which, I kissed her, shook hands with the major, kissed Matilda's hand, and laughed prodigiously, as though I had done something confoundedly droll,--a sentiment evidently participated in by Sparks, who laughed too, as did the others; and a merrier, happier party never sat down to supper.
"Make your company pleased with themselves," says Mr.Walker, in his _Original_ work upon dinner-giving, "and everything goes on well." Now, Major Dalrymple, without having read the authority in question, probably because it was not written at the time, understood the principle fully as well as the police-magistrate, and certainly was a proficient in the practice of it.
To be sure, he possessed one grand requisite for success,--he seemed most perfectly happy himself.

There was that _air degage_ about him which, when an old man puts it on among his juniors, is so very attractive.

Then the ladies, too, were evidently well pleased; and the usually austere mamma had relaxed her "rigid front" into a smile in which any _habitue_ of the house could have read our fate.
We ate, we drank, we ogled, smiled, squeezed hands beneath the table, and, in fact, so pleasant a party had rarely assembled round the major's mahogany.

As for me, I made a full disclosure of the most burning love, backed by a resolve to marry my fair neighbor, and settle upon her a considerably larger part of my native county than I had ever even rode over.