"You have been reading the seedsman's tallies, Mr. Jardine."

"Never mind; you agree with me?"

"The world and the poets choose May. And you begin to be eccentric and choose March."

"My father conducted my mother here; she has told me the circumstances a hundred times, though she is a quiet woman; and she wore such a cloth gown as you wear to-day."

"Mr. Jardine, you are talking nonsense; this is a new stuff, I assure you it has not been half-a-dozen months out of the looms; and do you suppose, sir, that I shall wear this dress in the month of May?"

"That comes of confiding those details to men. I always thought it was a gown like this one; and he asked her to abide at Whitethorn, and crown his lairdship and gladden and sweeten his entire future career; and he succeeded at last in winning her consent. And this is the thorn walk, Joanna, and I am free to re-enact the old passage in two lives, and plead with you not to desert Whitethorn if we are to retain it. I am poorer by a few thousands since I first made the same prayer to you; but your father puts no weight on the difference, or, in his rare generosity, lets it tell in my favour; and I don't think we need break our hearts about our little loss, if we look to our great gain. Here I beg you, as the humblest and most sincere of your petitioners, to put your life into my life, and cause the united life to bud and blossom into the May of the heart."

"And November and December would come to that year likewise."

"Yes, they will; but they will tread hard upon the real new-year, the veritable new year, that will

"Ring out the false, ring in the true"

of this hoary world. Will you travel to it with me, Joanna? Shall we strive and pray, and help each other to reach it together? Shall we begin it even here? Your father will bestow you solemnly and gladly; my mother will accept you with a blessing."

Joanna said, "Yes; God bless us, Harry," reverently; and, reverently, God blessed them.

Harry was energetic, and Joanna was prudent, and old Mrs. Jardine was proud of the spirit with which they saved the swamped estate of Whitethorn even from Mr. Crawfurd's bond; and having helped themselves, they helped others, then and ever afterwards.

Polly Musgrave applied to them in time. Polly had written on Joanna Crawfurd's marriage a jeering, jibing letter. "So you have gone and done as I prophesied, after all your wrath on the moor, and preciseness at Hurlton. But, first, you were as silly as possible, and wanted to revive the Middle Ages, which was quite in Don Quixote's tone; you to pine and die, and he to shoot himself (as violent deaths are hereditary), or addict himself to loose living and destruction. Then, when he loses his money, and in common sense you may both think better of it, shake hands and go your several ways; you make all up, post haste, and come together with a flourish of trumpets, and poverty will come in at the door, and love fly out at the window. Fie! I am ashamed of you, after all!"

But Polly wrote in a different strain a year or two later:—"DEAR COUSIN JOANNA,—I am not so healthy and heartless as I used to be, and I have been teased with a desire to come to Whitethorn, and perhaps profit by your carriage in this world, as I never dreamt of once upon a time. But I will say this for myself, I only wrote and crowed over you when you were quite able to afford it. I was very glad of your happiness, child (as our grandmother wrote, and one of our grandmothers was the same person! think of that, Harry Jardine!). Is Harry Jardine as promising as he used to be before you took him in hand; or is the promise fulfilled in an upright, generous, gladsome (and because of that last word you would insist on adding godly) man? He was a man of whom to make a spoon or spoil a horn, and you were the woman to perform the delectable feat."

Polly had found her heart not a very lofty one, not a very sensitive one—but an honest and kind heart in the main, which was permitted to extricate itself from the slough of luxury and self-indulgence, and beat warmly and faithfully throughout the rest of its course.



ON THE STAGE AND OFF THE STAGE.

I.—THE "BEAR" AT BATH.

The Place was old Bath, in the days immediately succeeding those of Alexander Pope and William Hogarth, and dovetailing into those of Horace Walpole and the Wesleys.

The Age was one of rackets and reaction from morning till night, and Bath was the head-quarters of the first—the scene of the pump-room, the raffle, the public breakfast, the junketing at mid-day, the ball at midnight, the play, the ridotto.

The Scene was a private room in the "Bear," when it was crowded with peers, bullies, rooks, highwaymen, leaders of fashion, waiting-women, and stage stars. The "Bear" was held by great Mrs. Price, a hostess large, shining, portly—a friendly great woman, too magnificent to be fussy, or mean, or spiteful. The "Bear" looked out on the Parade, with its throngs of beaux—veritable beaux, with Beau Nash at their head—wigged, caned, and snuff-boxed, and belles with trains borne by black boys, cambric caps and aprons, and abundance of velvet patches. In and out of its yawning doorway strutted fine gentlemen, chaplains, and wits, while grooms, public and private, swarmed round the house. Its broad stairs and low wide corridors, traversed by the more private company, led to sitting rooms of all degrees, panelled with oak or lined with cedar, with worked worsted wonders in the shape of chairs, and China monsters by way of ornaments.

The Person was a handsome woman, attired negligently in what was called a sacque, with a mob-cap. She sat sipping a dish of tea, as sober women will after fatigue or in anticipation of exertion, and making occasional reference to some shabby, well-worn volumes and printed sheets piled up beside her. Her attitude was studious, for days when a chapter of the Bible, a cookery recipe, a paper by Addison or Dick Steele, or a copy of verses, included all the knowledge after which the gentler sex aspired; her retirement was remarkable at that gay era, and in that gadding neighbourhood; and her morning dress, though it would not have offended a Tabitha Tidy, looked plain among the silvered mazarines and the tippets of pheasants' tails.

She was a woman of about five-and-twenty; but her beauty, though still in its prime, showed the wear and tear of years. Had it not been that its chief power lay in the intellect and goodness which sat on the capacious but not cloudy brow, and gleamed out of the cordial dark blue eyes, and hovered round the somewhat wide and somewhat lined but never sensual mouth—you would have said this was a faded queen whom the world was mad to worship. As it was, she did look faded this spring afternoon, and occasionally fretted audibly enough as she turned over the leaves of her volumes, and sighed "heigho!" as she looked at her repeater—not quite so common an appendage as the little Geneva story-tellers, though a footpad carried always a goodly supply, and a gentleman's gentleman of very fine prestige would wear a couple, "one in each fob"—and sipped her tea; which, by the way, she drank, not out of one of the diminutive China cups, but out of an old battered, but very shining little silver tankard.

Anon my lady rose and strolled to a back window. She looked across the noisy, crowded stable-yard into the corner of a garden, where a lilac bush was budding into dusty dim purple and a hoary apple-tree blossomed white and pink like a blushing child, away over the green fields to a farmhouse upon a hill, where russet and yellow stacks proved the farmer's command of ready money, or caution in selling. From just such another farmhouse as that on which our bright benevolent woman—even in the dumps—was gazing wistfully, issued Caroline Inchbald, a beauty, and a generous, virtuous woman under great temptations, a friend and rival on equal terms with Amelia Opie.

But hark! an arrival in the next room: fresh guests—country people of consequence, for they were ushered in by Mrs. Price herself, who received in person their orders for an incongruous meal, neither dinner nor supper, to recruit them for some gala in which they had the prospect of figuring, to judge from a torrent of exclamations which pierced through a convenient cupboard in the partition.

"Make haste, girls," in bass tones.

"Eat away, Fiddy," in treble, mimicking the bass.

"Uncle, don't attempt the game-pie. We'll be too late, as sure as our heads. Didn't you hear Mrs. Price say there was a power of company wanting seats; it would be too bad if we lost the sight after all."

"What, Prissy, worse than Admiral Byng's defeat, or my spoilt medal?"

"Oh! Uncle Rowland, how can you joke! Now, Fiddy, there's a dear creature, don't have anything to say to the cream-tart. What although we're as hungry as hawks, if we only get a good view to talk about at the Vicarage and Larks' Hall."

"There—Prissy, dear, then I've done. I'll just run and shake our myrtle crapes and fresh pinch our stomachers."

"Hold! no such thing, lasses. I'm not to be left here to feed in solitude, and without e'er a portfolio or picture. You little geese, it is two good hours to the exhibition. Are you to be frizzing, and painting, and lacing, and mincing, and capering for two mortal hours, and your poor country uncle left to spoil his digestion for want of something else to do than eat? Is that your gratitude, when here have I come against my will to introduce you to the wicked, gay world, and spoil your Arcadian simplicity? Don't make faces, Prissy!"

"Oh! Uncle Rowland; you are making base pretences."

"Indeed, sir, I think you are as wild to see the wonders as we are."

But the remonstrance had its effect, for the young ladies evidently sat down again, and, by the clatter of knives and forks, one could judge they condescended to do some justice to the good things provided for their solace, while the conversation went on in more regular order.

The lady in the Nankin sitting-room had decidedly the advantage in this situation, as she did not soliloquize in private, and she heard through the cupboard and the locked door of communication the chat of her neighbours. They spoke no treason, and they ought to be more prudent if they told secrets: it was a real benefit to a lonely wight, a little irritated in nerve and temper, to be a party to their lively, affectionate, simple intercourse; and, as the truth must be told, the lady in the Nankin sitting-room crossed her hands with a motion of indolent interest and turned her head with an air of listless pleasure, nodding and beating her foot lightly on the floor now and then, in interjection and commentary. She could figure the group perfectly. Two rosy little girls brought into the town for a day and a night's shopping and gadding, as they would call it, under the escort of an indulgent uncle: a bachelor probably, else madam, his wife, would have been there to keep them in order; and not so very elderly, for the good man was of what is styled a sprightly turn, and though his nieces submitted to his authority, there was a decidedly modified amount of reverence in the way in which they insisted,

"You must comb out your curls, Uncle Rowland."

"And I'll tie your cravat for you, sir, and make you quite smart. We are not to appear abroad with a country bumpkin or a fright of a student, are we, Prissy?"

And mutual jokes were bandied pretty freely.

"Now, Prissy, are we to see the famous Traveller?"

"No, sir, it is to be the Virtuoso, with the mock copper coins."

"Bronze, child, bronze."

"We're to have nobody in particular, only Lady Betty," chimed in the more girlish voice. "The company, the other gentlefolks, will be quite sufficient besides."

"And Fiddy will scream when the blunderbusses are fired. Shall we take the precaution of putting cotton in her ears beforehand?" derided the man.

Then the single lady fixed further, that Prissy (Mistress Priscilla, doubtless, in company down in Somersetshire) was the cleverest and most forward, and that Fiddy (Mistress Fidelia) was the shyest and, perhaps, the prettiest, for she was clearly Uncle Rowland's favourite. But then, for all her rosy cheeks, poor child! she was delicate, since there was a constant cry from the conductor of the party, "Fiddy, you vain doll, remember your mantle; Madam is not here to wrap you up, nor Granny."

"Oh, sir! we've lots of scarfs and shawls, all for Fiddy; and she is to tie on her Iris hood against the draughts."

"What! one of the poppies and bluebells that Will Honeycomb admired? She'll beat you, Prissy, out and out. I would sicken and bear her company."

"I wonder to hear you, sir. I can tell you, Granny would not coddle me so. Granny is always preaching of hardening weakness."

"Ah, the old mother is no milksop!"

There, was she not right? Had she not full hints of the history of the Vicarage and madam its mistress, the mother of these two little girls; and of the parish priest her husband, their father—the younger brother of the tolerably educated squire yonder, with his Larks' Hall; and of Granny, who kept house there still for her elder son, where she had once reigned queen paramount in the hearty days of her homely goodman. It was a scroll fairly unfolded, and perfectly legible to the experienced woman.

"Uncle Rowland," prefaced the soft voice, more quietly, "do you really think the gay world of the town so much more vicious than the sober world of the country?"

"Why, no, my dear," answered the manly voice, now graver, and with a little sadness in its ring, "ignorance is not innocence, and depravity is vastly more general than any mode. Nevertheless, there are customs of which I would greatly prefer Prissy and Fiddy to remain unaware, like their mother before them."

"But Granny lived in the great world, and there is not one of us like Granny."

"The risk is too great, child; the fire is wondrous strong, though the pure gold be sometimes refined in the process—as your father would preach."

"And, sir, this Mistress Lumley, or Lady Betty, as they called her downstairs, is as virtuous as she is clever."

"You may depend upon that, Miss, or you had not come to Bath to see her play. They term the poor soul Lady Betty because she has turned on her heel from the worthless London sparks, and taught them to keep their distance."

"Uncle Rowland, I don't think you heartily sympathize with charming Lady Betty."

"Tut! child, I have not seen her. You would not have me captivated ere I ever set eyes on my enslaver? But, to speak honestly, little Fiddy, I own I have no great leaning to actresses and authoresses. There are perils enough in a woman's natural course, without her challenging the extremes of a fictitious career. More than that, Fiddy, I have not much faith in the passion that is ranted to the public; even if it were always a creditable passion. Those who are sorely hurt don't bawl, child: deep streams are still."

"I will play to him," the lady of the Nankin sitting-room says to herself, her lips parting with a slight smile, and her colour rising at the same time. Your true woman is easily pained, and, the more fully furnished, the more finely skilled, she is all the more susceptible to blame as to praise, and so on that account the less qualified for public life. There was many a strong enough argument against the stage and the desk which Master Rowland might have used instead of his weak one.

Lady Betty, in that bubbling, frothing, steaming London—Mistress Lumley in the provinces—was a young actress of great repute and good character, who had compelled success, like Mrs. Siddons after her, and reigned for several seasons, and still her fame was paramount and her respectability unquestioned. In those very dissipated days of Queen Anne and the early Georges, the broad prejudices which darken the stage were light in tint and slender in force. The great world was tumultuous, giddy, reckless, with innumerable victims falling suddenly into its yawning chasms, like the figures from the bridge in Mirza's vision; and the theatre was not a more exposed sphere than many another, and that made all the difference in the world. Very few save the strictest Methodists condemned it, when Henry Brooke wrote for it, and Dr. Johnson stood with his hands behind his back in the green room.

Mrs. Betty Lumley, tall, comely, high-principled, warm-hearted, and ingenuous, was come of yeomen ancestors. She did not see a play in a barn and run away after the drama, like Caroline Inchbald; but on the death of her father and mother, she went up with an elder sister and young brother to London to seek for an employment and a livelihood. Encountering some person of dramatic pursuits—manager, stage-painter, ticket-taker, or the like, or the wife of one or other—she was recommended to the stage. She was supported in the idea by all her connections, for then no one questioned the perfect respectability of the profession. She studied hard in new, though not uncongenial fields; she ventured; she tried again and again, with the "modest but indomitable pluck" of genius, and she at last won a position and a prospect of independence. In all this nobody blamed her; on the contrary, the magnates of the hour—kings, councillors, bishops—awarded her great credit for her parts, her industry, her integrity, her honour.

Not a lady of quality in London was more respected and admired, rightly or wrongly, than Mistress Betty. At the same time it is possible that, having reached the goal, could she have turned back and begun her walk anew, she would have hesitated before following this thorny path. It was a thorny path, for all its applause and success; nay, on account of them; even with a good woman like Mistress Betty it required all her sincerity, her sobriety, and, according to the prevailing standard, her religion, to deliver her from imminent danger. Moreover, with the attainment of the object, had come the bitter drops which qualified the cup. Her plain, fond, innocent sister was in her grave; and so within the two last years was the young brother, for whom her interest had procured a post of some importance in the Colonies, whence he bequeathed to Mistress Betty, his dear distinguished sister, his little savings. She struggled to be resigned, and was not only weary, but tempted to grasp at material rewards. This was the turning-point of her life. She would be virtuous to the last. Her honest, clear character revolted at vice; but she might harden, grow greedy of power, become imperious and arrogant. For, remember, I do not say that Mistress Betty had contracted no contamination. No, no; she had suffered from her selfish fits, her vain fits, her malicious fits—she had experienced her hours of boldness and levity—she had made her own way to eminence—she had struggled with unscrupulous rivals—she had heard much which we would have wished her not to have heard—she had been a member of that wild, ultra-fine, coarse, scandalous society: but as we find saints in strange company sometimes, so the cordial, faithful, generous woman remained with only a slight coating of affectation and worldliness, thirst for praise, desire after excitement, habit of command.

"I'll play to this horrid country Justice," whispers Mistress Betty, quite roused, and looking animated and brilliant already. "I hear by the gentleness of his voice, when he speaks of the sins and sorrows of mankind, and when he addresses his little girl, that the fellow has a heart; but he gave me no quarter, and he shall receive none in return. I'll conquer him. To come within sight and sound of the boards with his muddy boots and his snarls, spoiling the enjoyment of the lasses!"

Very true, Mistress Betty, it was neither very wise nor very gallant; but you ought to remember that the most loyal prejudices are sometimes as loyally abandoned.

II.—LADY BETTY ON THE STAGE.

The principal theatre of the queen of watering-places in her palmy days was filling fast, as it had done for the last two nights. Other attractions lost their power. Ombre, basset, hazard, lansquenet, loo, spread their cards and counters in vain for crafty or foolhardy fingers. The master of the ceremonies found his services at a discount; no troops of maidens, no hosts of squires, answered to his appeal; no double sets were forming to the inspiring strains of "Nancy Dawson." The worthy, charming, gifted Lady Betty had come down for three nights to improve, entertain, and enrapture, and this being her last night the theatre constituted the only orbit in which the planets would revolve.

The world was here in full-blown variety; sublime, languid peers, needy placemen, hilarious foxhunters, brave tradesmen, aspiring mechanics, poor good-for-nothings; sober housewives, whose thoughts were still of their husbands' shirt-fronts and their hasty-puddings, and who never dreamt that they were impugning their sobriety by attending a play; and above all, fine ladies armed with their fans and their essences. As a whole, the audience was in a vastly respectful attitude—the gentlemen tapping their snuff-boxes meditatively, and desisting in a great measure from their loud laughter, their bets, their cursing and swearing; the ladies only whispering behind their handkerchiefs, and moving to cause their diamonds to sparkle, all in acknowledgment of the vicinity of the fair and potent Lady Betty.

The play was Venice Preserved, and Lady Betty entered in an early scene. Truly a fine woman—not so lovely as Anne Oldfield, not so superb as Sarah Siddons; but with a frank, fair, womanly presence—bright, genial, quick, passionate through the distress of Belvidera, the repudiated daughter and beggared wife.

Dressed in the English fashion under the Georges, walked the maiden reared in the air blowing off the lagoons within the shadow of the grim lion of St. Mark, to such sentimental accompaniments as the dipping oar and the gondolier, and finished off with the peculiar whims of Betty Lumley. She wore a fair, flowered brocade, for which William Hogarth might have designed the pattern and afterwards prosecuted for payment the unconscionable weaver; a snow-white lace kerchief was crossed over her bosom and reached even to her shapely chin, where it met the little black velvet collar with its pearl sprig; her brown hair (which had shown rather thin, rolled up beneath her mob-cap) was shaken out and gathered in rich bows with other pearl sprigs on the top of her head; her cheeks showed slightly hollow, but were so fresh, so modest, so cool in their unpainted paleness, and on the smallest provocation acquired the purest sea-shell pink which it would have been a sin and a shame to eclipse with staring paint; the contour, a little sharper than it had once been, was only rendered more delicate by the defect, and so sweet yet—so very sweet; her beautiful arms were bare to the elbow, but shaded with falls of cobweb lace; and in one hand, poised daintily between two fingers, she held a natural flower, a bunch of common rural cowslips. At this period of the year such an appendage under any other touch would have been formal as the Miss Flamborough's oranges, but it was graceful in this woman's slight clasp.

"Enchanting creature!" "Fine woman!" "Otway's devoted wife to the life!" murmured the company, in a flutter of genuine admiration—forgetting themselves, these Sir Plumes and Belindas, once in a way.

"I do hope the poor soul will not be deserted and undone—she's so easy to serve—and all Bath, and, for that matter, Lon'on too, as I believe, at her feet!" says Mrs. Price, emphatically, to young Medlicot, whom she is patronizing for one night, because he knows somewhat of plays and players; and who, in spite of his allegiance to swimming, simpering Clarissa, would give a fortune to paint that pose. Belvidera need fear no lolling, no sneering, no snapping at her little peculiarities this night.

As she came on, "kind, good, and tender," telling poor distracted, misguided Jaffier, in his humiliation, that she joyed more in him than did his mother, Lady Betty darted a sharp, searching glance through the boxes. Ah! yonder they were! The little girls the parson's daughters, with their uncle the squire, fault-finding, but honourable. Two round-faced, eager, happy girls, intent upon the play, and the great London star, beautiful, bewitching Lady Betty, who is now looking at them—yes, actually staring them full in the face with her deep, melting, blue eyes, while she reassures her cowardly husband. How dared uncle Rowland disparage her?

There was uncle Rowland, younger than Lady Betty had taken him for—not more than five-and-forty—his coat trimmed with silver lace, a little old-fashioned, and even a little shabby in such company, his Mechlin tie rather out of date and already disordered, and his cocked-hat crushed below his arm. His face is bluff and ruddy among his pinched and sallow brethren: that of a big English gentleman, who hunted, shot, or fished, or walked after his whistling ploughman every morning, and on occasions daringly dashed in amongst the poachers by the palings of his park or paddock on summer evenings; yet whose hands were reasonably white and flexible, as if they handled other things than guns and fishing-rods, and whose eyes, at once clear and meditative, had studied more than the spire of his brother's church and the village street, more than quiet country towns, and loud watering-places, and deep metropolises.

Master Rowland had no family ties beyond the Vicarage; and was in no hurry to marry or settle, as the phrase went; though he was settled long ago, and might have married once a year without any impediment from old madam, as Mistress Betty would have been swift to suppose. He perfectly approved of Mr. Spectator's standard of virtue—"Miss Liddy can dance a jig, raise a pasty, write a good hand, keep an account, give a reasonable answer, and do as she is bid;" but then, it only made him yawn. The man was sinking down into an active-bodied, half-learned, half-facetious bachelor. He was mentally cropping dry and solid food contentedly, and, at the same time, he was a bit of a humourist. He loved his little Prissy and Fiddy, as dear god-daughters, whom he had spoilt as children, and whom he was determined to present with portions when he presided at their wedding dinners; but he had no mind to take any of their fellows, for better for worse, as his companion, till death did them part.

Then Lady Betty stepped upon the stage at Bath, and before a multitude of frivolous and simple, or gross and depraved spectators, incapable of comprehending her, she played to the manly, modestly intellectual squire.

Master Rowland woke up, looked his fill, as open-mouthed as the rest, and while he did so, his system received a shock. Lady Betty was revenged to an extent she had not foreseen.

The noble woman went with her whole soul into the sorrows of the dark-eyed, brown-faced sister whom Titian might have painted, and made them accord with her fair English love of justice, her blue-eyed devotion to her husband, her Saxon fearlessness and faith in the hour of danger: only she did look strange and foreign when, in place of lying prostrate in submission and rising in chaste, meek patience to rear her orphan son, she writhed, like a Constance in agony, and died more speedily from her despair than Jaffier by the dagger which on the scaffold freed Pierre. The assembly rose in whole rows, and sobbed and swooned. Mrs. Prissy and Mrs. Fiddy cried in delicious abandonment; Master Rowland sat motionless.

"I declare I had forgotten the Justice," reflects Lady Betty, resting behind the scenes. "I do believe I am that poor Belvidera for the last half-hour. I meant to bring the man to tears. His blooming face was as white as a sheet;—poor, dear, good man, I hope he's none the worse of it."

Master Rowland knows full well that she is Mistress Betty Lumley the great London actress, not Belvidera the Venetian senator's daughter; but he will never again turn from the chill of his stone-arched hall, where his fingers have grown benumbed riveting a piece of armour or copying an epitaph or an epigram, or linger under his mighty oak-tree, or advise with his poor tenants, or worship in church, without the sickening sense of a dull blank in his heart and home.

III.—MISTRESS BETTY BECOMES NURSE.

Bath was sleeping as soundly as if it had been a quaker town: any sounds of riot were scattered and subdued. The dowager did not count her gains as she clutched them, while borne along the street by the glare of the dropping flambeaux. Her son, who, like the young Duke of Marlborough and his brother peer, carried no meaner change than golden guineas, did not clink them as he tossed them to the chairmen fighting for the prize. The "Bear" was reasonably still for a great public-house with twos and threes of travellers departing at all hours, as waiters and ostlers stirred on their behalf, horses trotted out from adjoining stables, and circles of chariots suffered displacement—all in addition to the distinct and fervent sensation of the night coach.

Suddenly a noise and a flurry arose in the grey light and its general repose. Accents of terror and anxiety are heard, and a movement of pity and distress arises and grows in the establishment. A young girl is attacked by violent illness—a life in its spring-time is threatened with sudden extinction; friends at hand are seeking remedies and bewailing the calamity—friends at a distance, all unconscious, are mentioned with subdued voices and averted eyes.

Mrs. Price was wiping her eyes and carrying up restoratives with her own hands. "'Twas Mistress Fiddy, whom she had known from a child; the niece of Master Rowland, who had always supported the house; and madam, her mother, away at the Vicarage, and the dear child, so good and quiet."

"I will come, my good Mrs. Price. My sister had these fainting fits; I'm used to them. I'll revive the child: the poor child, I am sure she'll not be offended at the liberty. Pooh! I can sit up as well as sleep after playing. Dear! dear! Many a night I was happy to sit up with Deb," pleaded an urgent, benevolent voice, waxing plaintive towards the conclusion of the speech.

"Indeed you are too gracious, my lady—I mean madam," protested the perplexed, overwhelmed Mrs. Price; "but I dare not venture without Master Rowland's consent: he will do everything himself, issue his orders even, although Dr. Fulford's been upstairs lending his advice these ten minutes."

"A fudge for doctors when there's a helpful woman at hand, Mrs. Price? Convey my message to the squire; inform him that I've had experience—mind, experience—and am a full-grown, reasonable woman, and not a fine lady. I know the poor little sister will be shaking like a leaf, and frightening the darling; and you are stiff in the joints yourself, Mrs. Price, and a little overcome. I'm just the person, so let me in!"

Master Rowland, without his coat (for though he had an orderly turn of his own, he was not a methodical enough man to travel with a gown and slippers in his valise), was labouring to recover his niece; Mistress Prissy, with her cloak huddled round her, was making magnanimous efforts to aid her uncle; while the poor little sufferer—guileless, affectionate Mistress Fiddy—lay pale, faint, and chill, with life flickering beneath her half-closed eyelids and in the gushes of her fitful breath. Master Rowland's trouble rendered him outwardly cold and hard, as it does some men; yet Mistress Fiddy's closing eyes turned trustfully to him, and her weak fingers clung tightly to his strong hand.

"No, no; the fewer onlookers the better. What would a stranger do here, Mrs. Price?" he inquired angrily, remembering, with a pang, that certain new, unaccountable, engrossing emotions had quite banished Fiddy from his thoughts and notice, when he might have detected the signs of approaching illness, met them and vanquished them before their climax.

"Bid him speak a word with me, Mrs. Price, a gentleman cannot refuse. I have reasons which will excuse my importunity," reiterated that sympathetic voice.

He walked out doggedly, and never once lifted his eyes. "Madam, I am your servant; but we do not need your help: my niece would be scared by the presence of a stranger. Reserve your charity——" "for the poor" he was about to add; but she put her frank hand upon his arm, and said, "Your worship, I believe I could nurse the young lady better than anybody: I have seen my dear sister afflicted, as I judge similarly. Do not stand on ceremony, sir, and deprive a poor girl of a benefit which Providence has sent her, if you would not regret it. I beg your pardon, but do let me succour her."

He looked up. There she stood in her white wrapping-gown and cap, ready prepared for her patient; so appropriate-looking in dress and face, with her broad forehead full of thought, and her cheek flushed with feeling; an able tender woman in her prime, endeavouring to do Christian offices, longing to pour balm into gaping, smarting wounds, imploring to be allowed to fulfil her mission. He bowed, and stood aside; she curtsied, and passed in. He heard her voice the next moment, low, but perfectly audible, cheerful and pleasant, addressing Mistress Prissy. "My dear madam, your uncle has permitted me to count myself a mature friend, like madam your mother; and after this introduction you will excuse me for taking care of you. Doctor, what drops do you favour? You have them there; if you please, I'll offer them: I've administered them before." She spoke to the doctor very courteously; perhaps remarking that he was young and somewhat agitated. "Mayn't I chafe Mistress Fiddy's hands, doctor? You're better, my dear?"

Mistress Fiddy's head was on her arm; her eyes were raised to her nurse's face wonderingly but complacently, and, though quite conscious, Mistress Fiddy involuntarily sighed out "mother." Very motherly was the elder woman's assurance: "Yes, my dear, I'll serve as madam your mother in her absence, till madam herself comes; and she'll laugh at our confusion and clumsiness, I warrant."

Mistress Fiddy smiled a little smile herself. Nature was reacting in its own redemption; the necessary stimulus was obtained, and the little lass was in a fair way of recovery.

But Mistress Betty did not leave off her cares; she elected herself mistress of the sick room—for she reigned there as everywhere else. She dismissed shivering, tearful, grateful Prissy with a hug, and a whispered promise that her dear sister Fiddy would be as lively as a grig in the morning; got rid of the doctor and Mrs. Price, and all but routed Master Rowland, succeeding in driving him as far as the next room.

How light her foot was—light as her fingers were nimble; how cleverly she shaded the sick girl from the light, without depriving her of air! How resigned Fiddy was to be consigned to her! how quickly and entirely the child had confided in her; she had hailed her as another mother! Mistress Betty was putting the chamber to rights, in defiance of all the chamber-maids of the "Bear;" she was concocting some refreshing drink, for which Mrs. Price had supplied the materials, over the fire, which she had ordered in case of mould and damp, even in the well-seasoned "Bear." Once she began to sing softly what might have been a cradle-song, but stopped short, as if fearing to disturb Fiddy, and composed herself to perfect stillness. Then Master Rowland heard Mistress Fiddy question Mistress Betty in her weak, timid voice, on Fiddy's own concerns. "You said you had seen these fits before, madam? May I be so bold as to ask, did the sufferer recover?"

There was a moment's silence. "It was my sister, Fiddy: she was much older than I. She had a complication of diseases, besides being liable to swoons all her life. My dear, she died, as we must all die when our time comes; and may we all be as well prepared as was Deb! In the meantime we are in God's hands. I have been taken with fainting fits myself, Fiddy, ere now. I think they are in my constitution, but they are not called out yet, and I believe they will be kept under; as, I fully trust, country air, and exercise, and early hours, will conquer yours."

"And you will take great care of yourself, and go into the country sometimes, dear Mistress Betty," pleaded the girl fondly, forgetting herself.

Mistress Betty laughed, and turned the conversation, and finally read her patient to sleep with the Morning Lesson, given softly and reverently, as good Bishop Ken himself might have done it.

The poor squire was a discomfited, disordered Sir Roger. He could not cope with this fine woman; and then it came home to him imperatively that he was precisely in that haggard, unbecoming state of looks and costume significantly expressed in those days by the powder being out of a man's hair and his frills rumpled. So he absented himself for an hour, and returned freshened by a plunge in the river and a puff in his wig. But, alas! he found that Mistress Betty, without quitting Mistress Fiddy's bedchamber, and by the mere sleight of hand of tying on a worked apron with vine clusters and leaves and tendrils all in purple and green floss silks, pinning a pink bow under her mob-cap, and sticking in her bosom a bunch of dewy ponceau polyanthuses, had beat him most completely.

Mistress Fiddy was, as Mistress Betty had predicted, so far re-established that she could breakfast with the party and talk of riding home later in the day; though wan yet, like one of those roses with a faint colour and a fleeting odour in their earliest bud. And Mistress Betty breakfasted with the Parnells, and was such company as the little girls had never encountered before; nor, for that matter, their uncle before them, though he kept his discovery a profound secret. It was not so pleasant in one sense, and yet in another it made him feel like a king.

This was Mistress Betty's last day in Bath, and she was to travel up to Town in the train of my Lord and Lady Salop, by easy stages and long halts; otherwise she must have hired servants, or carried pistols, and been prepared to use them, in the mail. Fortunately the Salops' chariots and gigs did not start till the afternoon, so that Mistress Betty had the morning to spend with her new friends, and she was delighted to bestow it on them; though my Lord and Lady and their satellites were perpetually sending lacqueys with compliments, conveniences, and little offerings to court Mistress Betty,—the star in the plenitude of her lustre, who might emulate Polly Peacham, and be led to the altar by another enslaved Duke of Bolton.

How pleasant Mistress Betty was with the girls! Upon the whole, she slighted "the Justice," as she had dubbed him. She saw with her quick eyes that he was something superior; but then she saw many men quite as well-looking, well-endowed, well-mannered, and with as fair intellects, and more highly cultivated than he.

But she did not often find a pair of unsophisticated little girls won to her by her frankness and kindness, and dazzled by her goodness and greatness. How she awoke Fiddy's laugh with the Chit-Chat Club and the Silence Stakes. What harmless, diverting stories she told them of high life—how she had danced at Ranelagh, sailed upon the Thames, eaten her bun at Chelsea, mounted one of the eight hundred favours which cost a guinea a piece when Lady Die became a countess, and called upon Lady Petersham, in her deepest mourning, when she sat in her state-bed enveloped in crape, with her children and grandchildren in a row at her feet! And then she told that she was born in a farmhouse like that on the hill, and would like to know if they roasted groats and played at shovelboard there still; and ended by showing them her little silver tankard, which her godfather the jolly miller had given her, and out of which her elder sister, who had never taken kindly to tea, had drunk her ale and her aniseed water. And Fiddy and Prissy had each a draught of milk out of it, to boast of for the rest of their lives, as if they had sipped caudle out of the caudle-cup at a royal heir's christening.

Mistress Betty made the girls talk, too,—of their garden, the old parish clerk, the housekeeper at Larks' Hall, granny, madam, the vicar, and, to his face, of Uncle Rowland, his horses and colts, his cows and calves, his pictures and cabinets. They spoke also of Foxholes, of Letty and Grizel, of Sedley and Bearwood, and Dick Ashbridge—at whose name Prissy laughed saucily, and Fiddy bit her lips and frowned as fiercely as she was able. With what penetration Mistress Betty read their connections, and how blithely and tenderly she commented upon them!

Mistress Betty promised to send her young friends sets of silk for their embroidery (and kept her word); she presented Prissy with her enamel snuff-box, bearing an exact representation of that ugly building of St. James's; and Fiddy with her "equipage"—scissors, tablets, and all, chased and wreathed with tiny pastorals, shepherds reclining and piping on sylvan banks, and shepherds and shepherdesses dancing on velvet lawns.

Mistress Betty kissed the girls at parting, and wished them health, peace, and good husbands; she held out her hand to Master Rowland, who took it with a crimson cheek, and raised it to his lips: pshaw! she never once looked at him.

The poor bachelor squire drove off, but for his manhood, groaning inwardly. Lady Betty had acted, and caught not only her share of Master Rowland's ticket, to which she was fairly entitled, but the cream of his fancy and the core of his heart; with which she had no manner of business, any more than with the State Papers and the Coronation-jewels.

IV.—MASTER ROWLAND GOES UP TO LONDON.

In the green-room of one of the great London theatres—David Garrick's, perhaps—the stage company and their friends were waiting the call-boy and the rising of the curtain.

As strange boards as any—as broad contrasts. Here a king, with his crown cast down; there a beggar, with his wallet laid aside. But kings and beggars are not affording the glaring discrepancies of Hogarth's "Olympus in a Barn," but suggesting and preserving the distinctions far below the buskins, the breastplate, the sandals, the symars. Here are heroes, with the heroism only skin deep; and peers, like their Graces of Bolton and Wharton, with less of the lofty, self-denying graces and the ancient chivalry, than the most grovelling of ploughmen.

Among the crowd, Lady Betty is biding her time, very nonchalant, and a little solitary in her state. Ladies who are independent, exclusive, and inflexible, however admired and respected, are generally left to enjoy their own opinions unmolested and at their leisure, whether behind the stage curtain or elsewhere.

Just then a country gentleman, whose murrey coat has a certain country cut, while his complexion breathes of hay-fields and hedge sides, is introduced, gazes round, and steps up to her. Mistress Betty cries out, "La!"—an exclamation not a whit vulgar in her day—"the Justice!" And she holds forth both her hands. "How are dear Mistress Prissy and Mistress Fiddy? Have you come up to town for any time, sir? I wish prosperity to your business."

He has not held such kind, unaffected, friendly hands since they parted; he has only once before held a hand that could have led a Jaffier to confess his conspiracy—that could have clung to a crushed man, and striven to raise him when calamity, like a whirlwind, cast him down.

The squire is sensibly moved, and Mistress Betty vindicates her womanliness by jumping at a conclusion and settling in her own mind that his brain is addled with this great London—its politicians, its mohawks, its beggars in Axe Lane, its rich tradesmen in Cranbourne Alley, its people of quality, fashion, and taste in their villas at Twickenham.

He asks if she is on in Belvidera, and when he hears that it is another actress's benefit, and that she has only consented to appear in a secondary part in a comedy of Sir John's, who is now a great castle-builder, he does not trouble himself to enter a box; at which she is half flattered, half perplexed. He waits, hot and excited, until her short service is over. He will not call upon her at her lodgings, because, in his delicacy, he has so keen a remembrance of her exposed position.

In the corner behind the curtain, bounded by the refreshment table, and filled with the prompter's monotonous drawl,—far, far from his barley ripe for the mowing, his boxwood peacocks, his greyhaired Hal and his buxom milkmaids; far from old madam, the pedantic, formal vicar, young madam, brisk, hot, and genial, and his old charmers Prissy and Fiddy,—the squire told his tale of true love. The man threw down the costs and besought Mistress Betty Lumley, Lady Betty, to renounce the stage, forsake fame, quit studies, rehearsals, opening-nights, and concluding curtsies amidst the cheers of thousands, to go down with him to rural Larks' Hall, to grow younger, happier, and better every day, and die like Lady Loudon in her hundredth year, universally regretted,—above all, to fill up the gulf which had yawned in the market-place of his existence since that night at Bath.

It was a primitive proceeding. Lady Betty was amazed at the man's assurance, simplicity, and loyalty. He spoke plainly—almost bluntly—but very forcibly. It was no slight or passing passion which had brought the squire, a gentleman of a score and more of honourable descents, to seek such an audience-chamber to sue a pasteboard queen. It was no weak love which had dislodged him from his old resting-place, and pitched him to this dreary distance.

Mistress Betty was taken "all in a heap;" she had heard many a love-tale, but never one with so manly a note. Shrewd, sensitive Mistress Betty was bewildered and confounded, and in her hurry she made a capital blunder. She dismissed him summarily, saw how white he grew, and heard how he stopped to ask if there were no possible alternative, no period of probation to endure, no achievement to be performed by him. She waved him off the faster because she became affrighted at his humility; and got away in her chair, and wrung her hands, and wept all night in the long summer twilight, and sat pensive and sick for many days.

In time, Mistress Betty resumed her profession; but she was unusually languid: she played to disappointed houses, and cherished always, with more romance, the shade of the brave, trustful, Somersetshire squire and antiquary. Suddenly she adopted the resolution of retiring from the stage in the summer of her popularity, and living on her savings and her poor young brother's bequest. Her tastes were simple; why should she toil to provide herself with luxuries? She had no one now for whose old age she could furnish ease, or for the aims and accidents of whose rising station she need lay by welcome stores; she had not even a nephew or niece to tease her. She would not wear out the talents a generous man had admired on a mass of knaves and villains, coxcombs and butterflies; she would not expose her poor mind and heart to further deterioration. She would fly from the danger; she would retire, and board with her cousin Ward, and help her with a little addition to her limited income, and a spare hand in her small family; and she would jog-trot onwards for the rest of her life, so that when she came to die, Mistress Prissy and Mistress Fiddy would have no cause to be ashamed that so inoffensive, inconspicuous, respectable a person had once been asked to stand to them in the dignified relation of aunt. The public vehemently combated Mrs. Betty's verdict, in vain; they were forced to lament during twice nine days their vanished favourite, who had levanted so unceremoniously beyond the reach of their good graces.

V.—MISTRESS BETTY TRAVELS DOWN INTO SOMERSETSHIRE.

A formal but friendly letter came to Mistress Betty, when her life was one of long dusty exertion, and her heart was very thirsty and parched. The shabby-genteel world and the tradesman's life, unless in exceptional cases of great wealth, were different things a hundred and fifty years ago from what they are now. The villas at Twickenham, the rural retreats, the gardens, the grottos, the books, the harpsichords, the water-colour drawings, belonged to the quality, or to the literary lions: to Lady Mary or Pope, Horace Walpole or his young friends the Berrys. The half-pay officer's widow, the orphan of the bankrupt in the South Sea business, the wife and family of the moderately flourishing haberdasher, or coach-builder, or upholsterer—the tobacconist rose far above the general level—were cooped up in the City dwellings, and confined to gossip, fine clothes, and good eating if they could afford them. A walk in the City gardens, a trip to Richmond Hill, and the shows, were their pastimes, and Mr. Steele's 'Christian Hero,' 'An Advice to a Daughter,' and De Foe's 'History of the Plague,' were their mental delectation.

But Mistress Betty had the soul of a martyr; she had resigned herself to sinking down into the star of cousin Ward's set, who went on holidays to the play—mostly honest, fat and fatuous, or jaunty and egotistical folk, who admired the scenery and the dresses, but could no more have made a play to themselves than they could have drawn the cartoons. She helped cousin Ward, not only with her purse, but with a kinswoman's concern in her and hers: she assisted to wash and dress the children of a morning; she took a turn at cooking in the middle of the day; she helped to detain Master Ward at the tea-table, and to keep his wig and knee-buckles from too early an appearance and too thorough a soaking of his self-conceit and wilfulness at his tavern; and she heard the lads their lessons, while she darned their frills before supper.

Then arrived the summons, over which Mistress Betty, a little worn by voluntary adversity, shed "a power" of joyful tears. To travel down into Somersetshire, and stroll among the grass in the meadows, and the gorse on the commons, which she had not seen for twelve months; to feed the calves, and milk the cows, and gather the eggs, and ride Dapple, and tie up the woodbine, and eat syllabub in a bower; to present "great frieze coats" and "riding-hoods" to a dozen of the poorest old men and women in the parish; to hear prayers in a little grey church, through whose open windows ivy nodded, and before whose doors trees arched in vistas; to see her sweet little Prissy and Fiddy, who had taken such a fancy to her, and the vicar, and madam, and granny, and find them all perfectly agreeable, and not slighting her or doubting her because she had been a woman of fashion and an actress; and Master Rowland well disposed of elsewhere; Larks' Hall deserted by its master—the brave, generous, enamoured squire—heigho! Mistress Betty, for all her candour, good humour, and cordiality, had her decent pride, and would not have thrown herself at any man's head.

Somersetshire, in spite of Bath, was as antediluvian a hundred and fifty years ago as the lanes and coombes of Devonshire. Larks' Hall, Foxholes, Bearwood, the Vicarage of Mosely, and their outlying acquaintances, their yeomen and their labourers, lived as old-fashioned and hearty a life as if the battle of Sedgemoor had never been fought.

Down in Somersetshire, among its orchards, nutteries, and blackberry thickets, poor little Mistress Fiddy was drooping, as girls would pine sometimes, even in the days of Will Shakspeare, ere cloth-yard shafts were abolished from merry England, when there were still mayings among the hyacinths, and milkmaids' dances under the thorns, and mummings when the snow fell. And Dick Ashbridge shot and fished in the most disconsolate abandonment, though the girl yet ran past him "like a ghost" when the beetle and bat were abroad, and he was still mooning about the vicarage meadows.

Neither of them knew for certain, and nobody could predict exactly, that she would live to wed Dick, bear him children, and leave him a sorrowful widower, whose heart was chastened—not torn. No; nor could the good folk in Somersetshire understand how closely Lady Betty and little Fiddy were bound up together, and how little Fiddy was to return Lady Betty's kindness, in the days when the little girl should be the teacher, and the fine woman the scholar, and the lesson to be learnt came from regions beyond the stars.

In the meantime, Fiddy was a sick, capricious, caressed darling in a cambric cap and silk shawl, on whom fond friends were waiting lovingly: whom nobody in the world, not even the doctor, the parish clerk, or the housekeeper at Larks' Hall, dreamt of subjecting to the wholesome medicine of contradiction—unless it might be Granny, when she came in with her staff in her hand. She would laugh at their excess of care, and order them to leave off spoiling that child; but even Granny herself would let fall a tear from her dim eyes when she read the register of the child's age in the family Bible.

"Ah!" sighs whimsical little Mistress Fiddy, "if only Lady Betty were here—great, good, kind, clever, funny, beautiful Lady Betty—who cured me that night at Bath, papa and mamma, I would be well again. She knows the complaint; she has had it herself; and her face is so cheering, her wit so enlivening, and she reads the lessons so solemnly and sweetly. O mamma! send for Mistress Betty; she will come at once; she does not play now; the prints say so. She will be the better of the country air too. Send for Mistress Betty to Mosely."

Madam was in a difficulty. An actress at the vicarage! And Master Rowland had been so rash. He had dropped hints, which, along with his hurried visit to London, had instilled dim, dark suspicions into the minds of his appalled relations of the whirlpool he had just coasted, they knew not how: they could not believe the only plain palpable solution of the fact. And Granny had inveighed against women of fashion and all public characters, ever since Uncle Rowland took that jaunt to town, whence he returned so glum and dogged. But then, again, how could the mother deny her ailing Fiddy? And this brilliant Mistress Betty from the gay world might possess some talisman unguessed by the quiet folks at home. Little Fiddy had no real disease, no settled pain: she only wanted change, pleasant company, and diversion, and would be plump and strong again in no time. And Mistress Betty had retired from the stage now; she was no longer a marked person: she might pass anywhere as Mistress Lumley, who had acted with success and celebrity, and withdrawn at the proper moment, with the greatest dignity and discretion. And Master Rowland was arranging his affairs to make the grand tour in the prime of life: his absence would clear away a monstrous objection. What would the Vicar say? What would Granny say?

The Vicar ruled his parish, and lectured in the church; but in the parsonage he thought very much as madam did, and was only posed when old madam and young madam pulled him different ways.

And Granny! Why, to madam's wonder, Granny required no wheedling, but—apprised of the deliberation, by the little minx Prissy, who in Fiddy's illness attended on Granny—she sent for madam before madam even knew that the proposal had been so much as mooted to her, and struck her stick on the ground in her determined way, and insisted that Mistress Betty should be writ for forthwith and placed at the head of the child's society. Granny, who had soundly rated fine ladies and literary women not two days before! It was very extraordinary; but Granny must have her way. The children paid her affectionate duty, young madam did her half-grateful, half-vexed homage, the Vicar and Master Rowland deferred to her in her widowhood and dependence, and with little less grace and reverence than what she had taught them to practise when they were lads under tutelage. She was, in fact, the fully accredited mistress of Larks' Hall.

And Granny, in reality, presided at the vicarage; not oppressively, for she was one of those sagacious magnates who are satisfied with the substance of power without loving its show. Notwithstanding, she prevented the publication of more than two calf-skin volumes at a time of the Vicar's sermons; she turned madam aside when she would have hung the parlour with gilt leather, in imitation of Foxholes; and she restricted the little girls to fresh ribbons once a month, and stomachers of their own working. And so, when Granny decreed that Mistress Betty was to be invited down to Mosely, there was no more question of the propriety of the measure that there would have been of an Act of Council given under the Tudors; the only things left to order were the airing of the best bedroom, the dusting of the ebony furniture, and the bleaching on the daisies of old madam's diamond quilt.

Down to Somersetshire went Mistress Betty, consoling cousin Ward with the gift of a bran-new mantua and a promise of a speedy return, and braving those highwaymen who were for ever robbing King George's mail; but the long, light midsummer nights were in their favour, and their mounted escort had to encounter no paladins of the road in scarlet coats and feathered hats.

Mistress Betty's buoyant spirit rose with the fresh air, the green fields, and the sunshine. She was so obliging and entertaining to an invalid couple among her fellow-travellers, an orange nabob from India and his splendid wife, that they declared she had done them more good than they would derive from the Pump-room, the music, and the cards, to which they were bound. They asked her address, and pressed her to pay them a visit; when they would have certainly adopted her, and bequeathed to her their plum. As it was, half-a-dozen years later, when, to her remorse, she had clean forgotten their existence, they astounded her by leaving her a handsome legacy; which, with the consent of another party concerned—one who greatly relished the mere name of the bequest, as a proof that nobody could ever resist Lady Betty—she shared with a cross-grained grand-nephew whom the autocratic pair had cut off with a shilling.

VI.—BETWEEN MOSELY AND LARKS' HALL.

At Mosely Mistress Betty alighted at last, entered the wicket-gate, and approached the small, weather-stained, brick house. She made her curtsy to madam, asked the Vicar's blessing—though he was not twenty-five years her senior and scarcely so wise—hugged the little girls, particularly sick Fiddy, and showered upon them pretty tasteful town treasures, which little country girls, sick or well, dearly love. Fiddy's eyes were glancing already; but she did not leave off holding Mistress Betty's hand in order to try on her mittens, or to turn the handle of the musical box. And Mistress Betty finally learned, with some panic and palpitation, which she was far too sensible and stately a woman to betray, that the Justice was not gone—that Master Rowland, in place of examining the newly-excavated Italian cities, or dabbling in state treason in France, was no further off than Larks' Hall, confined there with a sprained ankle: nobody being to blame, unless it were Granny, who had detained Master Rowland to the last moment, or Uncle Rowland himself, for riding his horse too near the edge of the sandpit, and endangering his neck as well as his shin-bones. However, Mistress Betty did not cry out that she had been deceived, or screech distractedly, or swoon desperately (though the last was in her constitution), neither did she seem to be brokenhearted by the accident.

But Granny's reception of her was the great event of the day. Granny was a picture, in her grey gown and "clean white hood nicely plaited," seated in her wicker seat "fronting the south, and commanding the washing-green." Here Granny was amusing herself picking gooseberries—which the notable Prissy was to convert into gooseberry-fool, one of the dishes projected to grace the town lady's supper—when Mistress Betty was led towards her.

It was always a trying moment when a stranger at Mosely was presented to old Madam Parnell. The Parnells had agreed, for one thing, that it would be most proper and judicious, as Mistress Betty had quitted the stage—doubtless in some disappointment of its capabilities, or condemnation of the mode in which it was conducted,—to be chary in theatrical illusions, to drop the theatrical sobriquet Lady Betty, and hail their guest with the utmost ceremony and sincerity as Mistress Lumley. But Granny turned upon her visitor a face still fresh, in its small, fine-furrowed compass, hailed her as Lady Betty on the spot, and emphatically expressed all the praise she had heard of her wonderful powers; regretting that she had not been in the way of witnessing them, and declaring that as they escaped the snares and resisted the temptations of her high place, they did her the utmost honour, for they served to prove that her merits and her parts were equal. Actually, Granny behaved to Lady Betty as to a person of superior station, and persisted in rising and making room for the purpose of sharing with her the wicker seat; and there they sat, the old queen and the young.

Young madam had been quite determined that, as Uncle Rowland was so unfortunate as to be held by the foot at Larks' Hall from his tour, he should not risk his speedy recovery by hobbling over to Mosely, when she could go herself or send Prissy every morning to let him know how the invalid was. But the very day after Mistress Betty's arrival old madam secretly dispatched Tim, the message-boy, to desire the squire to order out the old coach, and make a point of joining the family party either at dinner or at supper. Young madam was sufficiently chagrined; but then the actress and the squire met so coldly, and little Fiddy was flushing up into a quiver of animation, and Mistress Betty was such delightful company in the slumbrous country parsonage.

It is pleasant to think of the doings of the Parnells, the witcheries of Mistress Betty, and the despotism of old madam, during the next month. Indeed, Mistress Betty was so reverent, so charitable, so kind, so gentle as well as blithe under depressing influences, and so witty under stagnation, that it would have been hard to have lived in the same house with her and have been her enemy: she was so easily gratified, so easily interested; she could suit herself to so many phases of this marvellous human nature. She listened to the Vicar's "argument" with edification, and hunted up his authorities with diligence. She scoured young madam's lutestring, and made it up in the latest and most elegant fashion of nightgowns, with fringes and buttons, such as our own little girls could match. She made hay with Prissy and Fiddy, and not only accomplished a finer cock than weak Fiddy and impatient Priss, but surpassed the regular haymakers. And she looked, oh! so well in her haymaker's jacket and straw hat—though young madam was always saying that her shape was too large for the dress, and that the slight hollows in her cheeks were exaggerated by the shade from the broad-brimmed flapping straw.

Of course Mistress Betty performed in the "Traveller" and "Cross Purposes," and gave out riddles and sang songs round the hearth of a rainy evening, or about the cherrywood table in the arbour, of a cloudless twilight, much more pat than other people—that was to be looked for; but then she also played at love after supper, loo and cribbage for a penny the game—deeds in which she could have no original superiority and supremacy—with quite as infectious an enthusiasm.

To let you into a secret, young madam was in horror at one time that Dick Ashbridge was wavering in his allegiance to her white rosebud, Fiddy; so enthralling was this scarlet pomegranate, this purple vine. But one evening Mrs. Betty turned suddenly upon the mad boy, to whom she had been very soft, saying that he bore a great resemblance to her cousin's second son Jack, and asked how old he was? and did he not think of taking another turn at college? This restored the boy to his senses in a trice, and she kissed Mistress Fiddy twice over when she bade her good night.

But old madam and Lady Betty were the chief pair of friends. Granny, with her own sway in her day, and her own delicate discrimination, acute intellect, and quick feelings, was a great enough woman not to be jealous of a younger queen, but to enjoy her exceedingly. Madam Parnell had seen the great world as well as Lady Betty, and never tired of reviving old recollections, comparing experiences, and tracing the fates of the children and grandchildren of the great men and women her contemporaries. Prissy and Fiddy vowed over and over again, that the stirring details were more entertaining than any story-book. For this reason, Granny took a personal pride in Lady Betty's simplest feat, as well as in her intellectual crown, and put her through every stage of her own particular recipes for cream cheese and pickled walnuts.

"The dickons!" cried a Somerset yeoman: "The Lon'on madam has opened the five-barred gate that beat all the other women's fingers, and gathered the finest elder-flowers, and caught the fattest chicken; and they tell me she has repeated verses to poor crazed Isaac, till she has lulled him into a fine sleep. 'Well done, Lon'on!' cries I; 'luck to the fine lady:' I never thought to wish success to such a kind." Granny, too, cried, "Well done, Lon'on! Luck to the fine lady!" If all Helens were but as pure, and true, and tender as Lady Betty!

Granny would have Lady Betty shown about among the neighbours, and maintained triumphantly that she read them, Sedleys, Ashbridges, and Harringtons, as if they were characters in a printed book—not that she looked down on them, or disparaged them in any way; she was far more tolerant than rash, inexperienced Prissy and Fiddy. And Granny ordered Lady Betty to be carried sight-seeing to Larks' Hall, and made minute arrangements for her to inspect Granny's old domain, from garret to cellar, from the lofty usher-tree at the gate to the lowly

"Plaintain ribbed that heals the reapers' wound"

in the herb-bed. No cursory inspection would suffice her: the pragmatical housekeeper and the rosy milkmaids had time to give up their hearts to Lady Betty like the rest. Master Rowland, as in courtesy bound, limped with the stranger over his helmets and gauntlets, his wooden carvings, his black-letter distich; and, although she was not overflowing in her praises, she had seen other family pictures by Greuze, and she herself possessed a fan painted by Watteau, to which he was vastly welcome if he cared for such a broken toy.

She fancied the head of one of the Roman emperors to be like his Grace of Montague; she had a very lively though garbled familiarity with the histories of the veritable Brutus and Cassius, Coriolanus, Cato, Alexander, and other mighty, picturesque, cobbled-up ancients, into whose mouths she could put appropriate speeches; and she accepted a loan of his 'Plutarch's Lives,' "to clear up her classics," as she said merrily; altogether poor Squire Rowland felt that he had feasted at an intellectual banquet.

At last it was time to think of redeeming her pledge to cousin Ward; and, to Mistress Betty's honour, the period came while Master Rowland was still too lame to leave Larks' Hall, except in his old coach, and while it yet wanted weeks to the softening, gladdening, overwhelming bounty of the harvest-home.

Then occurred the most singular episodes of perverseness and reiterated instances of inconsistency of which Granny had been found guilty in the memory of man, either as heiress of Larks' Hall or as old madam of the vicarage. At first she would not hear of Mistress Betty's departure, and asked her to be her companion, during her son's absence, in his house of Larks' Hall, where all at once she announced that she meant to take up her temporary residence. She did not approve of its being committed entirely to the supervision of Mrs. Prue, her satellite, the schoolmaster's daughter who used so many long words in cataloguing her preserves and was so trustworthy: Mrs. Prue would feel lonesome; Mrs. Prue would take to gadding like the chits Prissy and Fiddy. No, she would remove herself for a year, and carry over her old man Morris along with her, and see that poor Rowley's goods were not wasted or his curiosities lost while he chose to tarry abroad.

Master Rowland stared, but made no objection to this invasion; Mrs. Betty, after much private rumination and great persuasion, consented to the arrangement. Young madam was obliged to be ruefully acquiescent, though secretly irate at so preposterous a scheme; the Vicar, good man, to do him justice, was always ponderously anxious to abet his mother, and had, besides, a sneaking kindness for Mistress Betty; the girls were privately charmed, and saw no end to the new element of breadth, brightness, and zest, in their little occupations and amusements.

When again, of a sudden, after the day was fixed for Master Rowland's departure, and the whole family were assembled in the vicarage parlour—old madam fell a-crying and complaining that they were taking her son away from her—robbing her of him: she would never live to set eyes on him again—a poor old body of her years and trials would not survive another flitting. She had been fain to gratify some of his wishes; but see if they would not destroy them both, mother and son, by their stupid narrow-mindedness and obstinacy.

Such a thing had never happened before. Who had ever seen Granny unreasonable and foolish? The Vicar slipped his hand to her wrist, in expectation that he would detect signs of hay-fever, though it was a full month too late for the complaint—there had been cases in the village—and was shaken off with sufficient energy for his pains.

"Mother," exclaimed Master Rowland, haughtily, "I understand you; but I had a plain answer to a plain question months ago, and I will have no reversal to please you. Pity craved by an old woman's weakness! favours granted in answer to tears drawn from dim eyes! I am not such a slave!"

The others were all clamouring round Granny, kissing her hand, kneeling on her footstool, imploring her to tell them what she wanted, what she would like best, what they could go and do for her; only the squire spoke in indignant displeasure, and nobody attended to him but Mistress Betty.

It did appear that the squire had been too fast in repelling advances which did not follow his mother's appeal. Mistress Betty gave no token—she stood pulling the strings of her cap, and growing first very red, and then ominously white, like any girl.

Perhaps the squire suspected that he had been too hasty, that he had not been grateful to his old mother, or generous to the woman who, however fine, and courted, and caressed, was susceptible of a simple woman's anguish at scorn or slight. Perhaps there flashed on his recollection a certain paper in the 'Spectator,' wherein a young lady's secret inclination towards a young gentleman is conclusively revealed, not by her advances to save his pride, but by her silence, her blushes, her disposition to swoon with distress when an opportunity is afforded her of putting herself forward to attract his notice—nay, when she is even urged to go so far as to solicit his regard.

Master Rowland's brow lightened as if a cloud lowering there had suddenly cleared away—Master Rowland began to look as if it were a much more agreeable experience to contemplate Mistress Betty nervous and glum, than Lady Betty armed at a hundred points, and all but invulnerable—Master Rowland walked as alertly to her side as if there were no such things as sprains in this world. "Madam, forgive me if I have attributed to you a weak complacency to which you would never condescend. Madam, if you have changed your mind, and can now tolerate my suit, and accord it the slightest return, I am at your feet."

Assuredly, the tall, vigorous, accomplished squire would have been there, not figuratively but in his imposing person. Family explanations were admissible a century and a half ago; public declarations were sometimes a point of honour; bodily prostration was by no means exploded; matter-of-fact squires knelt like romantic knights; Sir Charles Grandison and Sir Roger de Coverley bent as low for their own purposes as fantastic gauze and tinsel troubadours.

But Mistress Betty prevented him. "I am not worth it, Master Rowland," cried Mistress Betty, sobbing and covering her face with her hands; and, as she could not have seen the obeisance, the gentleman intermitted it, pulled down the hands, kissed Madam Betty oftener than the one fair salute, and handed her across the room to receive Granny's blessing. Granny sat up and composed herself, wished them joy (though she had the grace to look a little ashamed of herself), very much as if she had obtained her end.

There is no use in denying that young madam took to bed for three days, and was very pettish for a fortnight; but eventually gave in to the match, and was not so much afflicted by it as she had expected, after the first brunt. Granny, in her age, was so absurdly set on the mesalliance, and so obliging and pleasant about everything else—the Vicar and the little lasses were so provokingly careless of the wrong done them and the injury to the family,—that she knew very well, when her back was turned, they formed as nonsensically hilarious a bridal party as if the wedding had concerned one of themselves and not the bachelor uncle, the squire of Larks' Hall. And Mistress Betty ordered down the smartest livery; and the highest gentry in Somersetshire would have consented to grace the ceremony, had she cared for their presence, such a prize was she in their country-houses when they could procure her countenance during their brief sojourn among sparkling rills and woodland shades. Altogether, young madam, in spite of her vanities and humours, loved the children, the Vicar, Granny, the bridegroom, and even (with a grudge) the bride, and was affected by the sweet summer season and the happy marriage-tide, and was, in the main, too good to prove a kill-joy.

Master Rowland and Mistress Betty were married by Master Rowland's own brother in the Vicar's own church, with Fiddy and Prissy and the Sedleys for bridesmaids, and Dick Ashbridge for a groom's-man. Cousin Ward, brought all the way from town to represent the bride's relations, was crying as if she were about to lose an only daughter. For Granny, she would not shed one bright, crystal tear on any account; besides, she was ever in state at Larks' Hall to welcome home, the happy couple. Ah, well, they were all happy couples in those days!

At Larks' Hall Mistress Betty bloomed during many a year; for a fine woman knows no decay; she only passes from one stage of beauty and excellence to another, wearing, as her rightful possession, all hearts—her sons', as their father's before them. And Master Rowland no longer sat lonely in his hall, in the frosty winter dusk or under the usher-oak in the balmy summer twilight, but walked through life briskly and bravely, with a perfect mate; whom he had not failed to recognize as a real diamond among the bits of glass before the footlights—a diamond which his old mother had consented to set for him.

Our squire and Lady Betty are relics of a former generation. We have squires as many by thousands, as accomplished by tens of thousands; but the inimitable union of simplicity and refinement, downrightness and dignity, disappeared with the last faint reflection of Sir Roger de Coverley. And charming Lady Betty departed also with early hours, pillions, and cosmetics—that blending of nature and art, knowledge of the corrupt world and abiding true-heartedness, which then existed—a sort of marvel.



A CAST IN THE WAGGON.

I.—DULCIE'S START IN THE WAGGON FOR HER COMPANY.

Old and young were clamouring hoarsely and shrilly by daybreak one September morning round a little girl, one of a cloth-worker's numerous family. She had been rather a tender lass, and change of air was thought good for her full growth. Though she was still small, she was close on her one-and-twentieth year, and her friends held it was high time for her to see the world. It was seeing the world to go with a late mayor's daughter, an orphan and an heiress, who had been visiting the cloth-worker's family, and would have Dulcie to live with her for awhile in a neighbouring town as a friend and companion.

Mind those worthy warm-hearted relatives of Dulcie's had no idea of her returning to her parents' nest in a hurry, though the two towns, Fairfax and Redwater, were within a day's journey by waggon of each other. Dulcie would see the world, and stay in her new abode in the next country town, or lose her character for dignity and spirit; and girls were fain to be thought discreet and decided a hundred years ago or so. She might as lief marry as not, when she was away on her travels. Girls married then with far less trouble than they accomplished such a journey. They ran down to Richmond and married on a Sunday, to save a talk and a show; they walked out of the opera where Handel might be performing, and observant gentlemen took the cue, followed on their heels, and had the knot tied by a priest, waiting in the house opposite the first chair-stand. Indeed, they contracted alliances so unceremoniously, that they went to Queen Caroline's or the Princesses' drawing-room, without either themselves or the world appearing quite sure whether they were maids or wives. Dear! dear! what did come of these foolish impulsive matches? Did they fulfil the time out of mind adage, "Happy's the wooing that's not long a-doing"? or that other old proverb, "Marry in haste, and repent at leisure"? Which was the truth?

It is a pity that you should see Dulcie, for the first time, in tears. Dulcie, who only cried on great occasions, in great sorrow or great joy—not above half-a-dozen times in her life. Dulcie, whom the smallpox could not spoil, with her pretty forehead, cat's eyes, and fine chin. Does that description give you an idea of Dulcie—Dulcie Cowper, not yet Madam, but any day she liked Mistress Dulcie? It seems expressive. An under-sized, slight-made girl, with a little face clearly, very clearly cut, but round in all its lines as yet; an intelligent face, an enthusiastic face, a face that could be very shrewd and practical, and, at the same time, a face that could be lavishly generous. The chief merit of her figure lay in this particular, that she "bridled" well. Yes, it is true, we have almost forgotten the old accomplishment of "bridling"—the head up and the chin in, with the pliant knees bent in a low curtsey. Dulcie "bridled," as she prattled, to perfection. She had light brown hair, of the tint of a squirrel's fur, and the smoothness of a mouse's coat, though it was twisted and twirled into a kind of soft willowy curls when she was in high dress. Ah! no wonder that Kit Cowper, the cloth-worker, groaned to see that bright face pass from his ninepin alley; but it was the way of the world, or rather the will of Providence to the cloth-worker, that the child should fulfil her destiny. So Dulcie was launched on the sea of life, as far as Redwater, to push her fortune.

No wonder Dulcie was liked by Clarissa Gage. Clarissa was two years younger than Dulcie, but she was half-a-dozen years older in knowledge of the world, and therefore fell in love with Dulcie for the sake of variety. Clarissa had the bones of a noble woman under her pedantry and affectation; she was a peg above Dulcie in station, and a vast deal before her in the world's estimation. She was indeed "a fortune;" and you err egregiously if you suppose a fortune was not properly valued a hundred years ago. Men went mad for fair faces and glib tongues, but solidly and sensibly married fortunes, according to all the old news-prints. But Clarissa was also a beauty, far more of a regular beauty than Dulcie, with one of those inconceivably dazzling complexions that blush on like a June rose to old age, and a stately height and presence for her years. She had dark brown curls of the deep brown of mountain waters, with the ripple of the same, hanging down in a wreath of tendrils on the bend of the neck behind. With all her gifts, Mistress Clary had the crowning bounty which does not always accompany so many inferior endowments: she had sense under her airs, and she was good enough to like Dulcie instinctively, and to think how nice it would be to have Dulcie with her and Mistress Cambridge in their formal brick house, with the stone coping and balcony, at Redwater. Besides, (credit to her womanhood,) Clarissa did reflect what a fine thing it would be for Dulcie Cowper getting up in years, really getting up in years, however young in spirit, to have the variety, and the additional chance of establishing herself in life. Certainly, Redwater was a town of more consideration than Fairfax, and had its occasional assemblies and performances of strolling players; and Clarissa, in right of her father's family, visited the vicar and the squire, and could carry Dulcie along with her, since the child's manners were quite genteel, and her clothes perfectly presentable.

It was a harmonious arrangement, in which not only Clarissa but Mistress Cambridge agreed. Cambridge was one of those worthy, useful persons, whom nobody in those strangely plain but decidedly aristocratic days—not even Clarissa and Dulcie, though they sat with her, ate with her, hugged her when they wanted to coax her—ever thought or spoke of otherwise than "Cambridge, a good sort of woman in her own way." The only temporary drawback to the contentment of the party was the shower of tears which fell at Dulcie's forcible separation from her relatives. It was forcible in the end; all the blessings had been given in the house—don't sneer, they did her no harm, no harm, but a vast deal of good—and only the kisses and tears were finished off in the street.

After all this introduction, it is painful to describe how the company travelled. It was in a stage waggon! But they could not help it. We never stated that they were out-and-out quality; and not even all the quality could travel in four coaches and six, with twelve horsemen riding attendance, and an unpaid escort of butchers, bakers, and apothecaries, whipping and spurring part of the way for the custom. What could the poor Commons do? There were not stage coaches in every quarter of the great roads; and really if they pocketed their gentility, the huge brown waggons were of the two extinct conveyances the roomier, airier, and safer both from overturns and highwaymen. The seats were soft, the space was ample, and the three unprotected females were considered in a manner incognito, which was about as modest a style as they could travel in. Of course, they were not in their flowered silks, their lutestrings, their mantuas. We are assured every respectable woman travelled then in a habit and hat, and no more thought of hoops than of hair powder. The only peculiarity was that beneath their hats they wore mob-caps, tied soberly under the chin, and red or blue handkerchiefs knotted over the hat, which gave them the air of Welsh market-women, or marvellously clean and tidy gipsies. Clarissa was spelling out the words in Pharamond—a French classic; Dulcie was looking disconsolately straight before her through their sole outlet, the bow at the end of the waggon, which circumscribed as pretty and fresh a circle of common and cornfield, with crimson patches of wood and the blue sky above, as one might wish to see. Occasionally the crack of a sportsman's gun was heard to the right or left, followed by a pheasant or a string of partridges darting across the opening of the canvas car; but as yet no claimant had solicited the privilege and honour of sharing the waggon and the view with our fair travellers.

II.—TWO LADS SEEK A CAST IN THE WAGGON.

"Hullo, Joe! we want a lift," cries a brisk voice, and the couple of great steeds—they might have been Flanders mares or Clydesdale horses, so powerful were they over the shoulders, so mighty in the flanks—almost swerved out of their direct line and their decorum. Two fellows suddenly started up from a couch where they had lain at length on a hay-stack, slid down the height, crashed over an intervening bit of waste land, and arrested the waggoner in his smock-frock and clouted shoes.

"Get in, Will, and take possession. Ha! hum! here are ladies: where will we stow our feet? I declare Will is on their skirts already, with more green slime than is carried on the breast of a pond. I believe he thinks them baggage—lay figures, as they've turned aside their heads. Gentlefolks for a wager! duchesses in disguise! I must make up to them, anyhow. Ladies, at your service; I humbly beg your pardon for having so much as thought of incommoding you, but indeed I was not aware of your presence. Come, Will, tumble out again instantly, and do not let us be so rude as to plague the ladies."

Poor Will! very stiff and tired, stared about him, disturbed and discomforted, and prepared to perform the behest of his more energetic companion.

Dulcie did a little of her "bridling," but said never a word; Clarissa lifted her large, rather languishing eyes, let them fall again on her mittens, and remained dumb. They speak before they were spoken to? not they, they knew better. At the same time, when Will stumbled as he alighted on his weary feet, they were guilty of an inclination to titter, though the accident was excusable, and the point of the joke small.

"You are very polite, sirs," protested Cambridge, making round eyes, and reddening and blowing at being constituted the mouthpiece of the party on any interest save that of victuals. "I vow it is very pretty behaviour; but as it is a public carriage, I don't think we are at liberty to deprive Joe of his money, and you, sirs, of your seats. What say you, Mistress Clary?"

"I decline to give an opinion," answered Clarissa with great dignity; in which she broke down a little by adding hastily, in half audible accents. "Be quiet, Dulcie!" for Dulcie's risible faculties had been excited in a lively degree. She had been crying so lately that there was a hysterical turn in her mirth, and having once given way to it she could not restrain herself, but was making all sorts of ridiculous faces and spasms in her throat without effect. You see, these were two ordinary, happy young girls; and the stiff starch of their manners and pretensions only brought out in a stronger light, and with a broader contrast, their youthful frolicsomeness.

"I think, sirs, you may come in—that is, if you keep your distance," Mistress Cambridge decided, with solemn reservation. With a multitude of apologies and thanks, the two young men, more considerate and courteous in their forward and backward fashion than many a fine gentleman of the time, clambered up, and coiled themselves into corners, leaving a respectful void between them and the original occupants of the waggon.

Tranquillity settled down on the travellers—a tranquillity only broken by the drowsy rumble of the waggon-wheels, and the perennial whistle of the stooping, grizzled waggoner. Dulcie was just thinking that they might have been Turks, they were so silent, when Mistress Cambridge stirred the still atmosphere by the inquiry—

"Pray, sirs, have you happened to fall in with any stubble chickens in your walk; I think you said you had been walking hereabouts?" affording Clarissa an opportunity of complaining afterwards, in the retirement of the little inn's private room, that these young fellows would judge them a set of gluttons or farmers' daughters abroad for a holiday, aping gentlewomen, instead of being duchesses in disguise.

Although the girls never lifted their eyes, yet, by a magic only known to such philosophers, they had taken as complete an inventory of the young men, beginning at their wardrobes, as if they had looked at them coolly from head to foot for a whole half-hour. They were aware that the fellows were in plain suits, though one of them was not without the air of being fine on occasions. Their coats were cloth, not brocade or velvet; their ruffles were cambric, not lace; their shoe-buckles were only silver; their hats were trimmed with braid, and neither with gold nor silver edging. They were not my lords; they were not in regimentals; they did not rap out oaths; they had not the university air; they showed no parson's bands; they were not plain country bumpkins—what were they?

After all, it was scarcely worth inquiry whether the newcomers belonged to law or physic; for the young women in their pride and petulance felt bound not to consider the investigation worth the trouble. The lad who was the leader, and who was unquestionably of gentle enough nurture, was a plain little fellow, sallow and homely-featured, although a good-natured person might suppose from his smiling sagacity that in animated conversation it would be quite possible to forget his face in his countenance. The other was ruddy, with a face as sharply cut as a girl's, and delicate features not fitting his long limbs—clearly he was no better than a nincompoop. Yes, the girls were perfectly justifiable in whispering as the waggon stopped to bait at the "Nine Miles House," and they got out to bait also—

"What a pair!"

"Such a fright, the little fellow, Clary!"

"Such a goose, the tall fellow, Dulcie!"

It is a sad truth that foolish young women will judge by the exterior, leap at conclusions, and be guilty of rude and cruel remarks.

What would come of it if the silly, sensitive hearts were in earnest, or if they did not reserve to themselves the indefeasible right of changing their opinions?

At the "Nine Miles House" the wayfarers rested, either in the sanded parlour, or the common kitchen of the ale-house. Mistress Clarissa and her party had the sanded parlour for themselves; the young men, with their cramped legs, stumbled into the flitch-hung kitchen, the more entertaining room of the two, and had plates of beans and bacon, a toast and a tankard; for the day was in September, and the wind was already bracing both to body and appetite. Mistress Clarissa carried her private stores, and Cambridge laid out her slices of roasts and broils, plates of buns and comforts, and cruets with white wines. But when did a heroine remain in a sanded parlour in an inn, when she could stroll over the country and lose her way, and get run at by wild cattle, and stared at by naughty gentlemen? Clary was not so mean-spirited, though she was physically lazier than Dulcie; she was eager to scamper across the stubble fields (where Cambridge expected chickens to roam in flocks), and to wander, book in hand, by yon brook with the bewitching pollards.

Dulcie could not accompany her. Dulcie being a practical woman, a needle in innocent sharpness, had peeped about the waggon to inspect their luggage, and had found to her horror that one of her boxes had burst its fastenings—that very box with her respected mother's watered tabby, and her one lace head on the place of honour on the top. So she and Cambridge had an earnest consultation on the accident, which resulted in their proceeding to tuck up their skirts, empty the receptacle with the greatest care and tenderness, and repack it with such skill that a rope would replace its rent hinges. Dulcie was not for walking.

Clarissa was thus forced to saunter alone, and after she had got to the brook and the pollards, she sat down, and leant her arms on the bars of an old farm gate. Soon tiring of looking about her, staring at the minnows and the late orange coltsfoot and white wild ranunculus, and the straw-coloured willow-leaves drooping into the water, she took out of her pocket that little brown French classic, Pharamond, and started again to accompany the French storyteller, advancing on the very tallest of stilts that storyteller ever mounted. It was a wonder truly that Clary on her mossy bank, and by a rustic stile, had not preferred the voices of the winds and the waters, the last boom of the beetle, the last screech of the martin, the last loud laugh of the field-workers borne over a hedge or two on the breeze, to the click and patter of these absurd Frenchmen's tongues.