She must dress it for me with her handkerchief, a service which she rendered me even with tears.

I could well have spared them, not loving on the whole to be made ridiculous, and the injury being in the nature of a cat's scratch.

Indeed, I would have suggested for her kind care rather the cure of my coat-sleeve, which had suffered worse in the encounter; but I was too wise to risk the anti-climax.

That she had been rescued by a hero, that the hero should have been wounded in the affray, and his wound bandaged with her handkerchief (which it could not even bloody), ministered incredibly to the recovery of her self-respect; and I could hear her relate the incident to 'the young ladies, my school-companions,' in the most approved manner of Mrs.Radcliffe! To have insisted on the torn coat-sleeve would have been unmannerly, if not inhuman.
Presently the residence of the archdeacon began to heave in sight.

A chaise and four smoking horses stood by the steps, and made way for us on our approach; and even as we alighted there appeared from the interior of the house a tall ecclesiastic, and beside him a little, headstrong, ruddy man, in a towering passion, and brandishing over his head a roll of paper.