After enjoying both, I retired to rest, as I hoped, for we had to make an early start in the morning.

Scarce was I in bed, ere the house rang again with laughing and romping just outside my door; black and white, old and young, male and female, all seemed chorusing together--feet clattered, passages echoed--it was a very Babel of noise and confusion.
What strange beings we are! Not two hours before, I had said and felt that laughing was catching; now, although the merry chirp of youth mingled with it, I wished the whole party at the residence of an old gentleman whose name I care not to mention.

May we not truly say of ourselves what the housemaid says of the missing article--"Really, sir, I don't know nothing at all about it ?" A few hours before, I was joining in the laugh as I waded nearly knee-deep in mud, and now I was lying in a comfortable bed grinding my teeth at the same joyous sounds.
It took three messages to the proprietor, before order was restored and I was asleep.

In the morning, I found that the cause of all the rumpus was a marriage that had taken place in the hotel; and the master and mistress being happy, the servants caught the joyous infection, and got the children to share it with them.

I must not be understood to cast any reflections upon the happy pair, when I say that the marriage took place in the morning, and that the children were laughing at night, for remember, I never inquired into the parentage of the little ducks.