We love those places most where we lived when we were young, and where we were wooed and won, and where we had those sweet dreams, which can only come to the very young, of a happy future, impossible in this transitory and fleeting life. Dear to me and romantic are the scenes which to many are associated with disease and infirmity, or at best with the mad riot of the race, the assembly, and the ball.

Truly there is no time, for a woman, like the time when she is young and beautiful, and is courted by a troop of lovers. She feels her power, though she does not understand it; she remembers it long after the power has gone, with the witchery of bright eyes, soft cheeks, and blooming youth. I think there can never be any faith or hope in the future so strong as to resist the sigh over the past, the feeling that it is better to be young than to be old: to blossom than to wither.

When we went to Epsom Wells we had managed between us, by silence as to the past and a tacit understanding, to forget the Rules altogether. Forgetting, indeed, is easy. Surely the butterfly forgets the days when it was a mere crawling grub; Cophetua’s queen no doubt soon learned to believe that she had royal blood, or blue blood at least, in her peasant veins (for my own part, I think the king should have mated with one nearer his own rank). There is little difficulty in putting out of sight what we wish forgotten. There was a man, for instance, about the Fleet market, running odd jobs, who actually had forgotten that he was once hanged. The people used to go there on purpose to see the wretch, who was, I remember, bow-legged and long-armed, with broad shoulders; his face was marked with smallpox; he squinted; he had a great scar upon his cheek; the bridge of his nose was broken; he had no forehead visible; his ears projected on either side, and were long, like the ears of a mule; his eye-teeth were like tusks; and as for his expression, it was that which John Bunyan may have had in his mind when he wrote about the mob in Vanity Fair, or the ill-favoured ones who got over the wall and accosted Christiana—an expression which one may briefly describe as indicating a mind not set upon spiritual things. Now this man had actually once been hanged, but being taken away after the hanging to Barber Surgeons’ Hall, near St. Giles’s Church, Cripplegate, was then restored to life by one who thought to dissect him. That was why everybody looked after him, and would have asked him questions if they had dared accost such a ruffian. For it seemed to the unthinking as if he, alone among living men, had, like Dante and Virgil, gone into the regions of the dead, conversed with the spirits of the unjust (being himself a monstrous criminal), and, after witnessing their tortures, had returned to the living. To those who bribed him with rum and then put questions, he replied that as for the hanging, it might be as the gentleman said, but he had forgotten it. As for what he saw between his hanging and his restoration to life, he had forgotten that too. Now if a man can forget having been hung, it stands to reason that he can forget anything.

At all events, without the insensibility of this wretch, we speedily agreed to forget the Fleet Rules, and in all our conversations to make as if we had never been there at all, and knew of the place, if at all, then only by hearsay and common bruit and rumour. As for the Chaplain of the Fleet, the great promoter of those marriages which made the place infamous and the chief performer of them notorious, we agreed that we were only to think of him as our benefactor.

Not that we put these resolutions into words, but we arrived at them in the manner common among women, with whom a smile or a glance is as intelligible as many words (with a bottle of wine) among men.

It was due to this desire to forget the past that we never even read through the “Farewell to the Fleet,” presented to us by Mr. Solomon Stallabras on the morning of our departure. The first four lines, which was as far as I got, ran as follows:

He handed the verses to us with a low bow as we stepped into the coach, leaving him behind still—poor wretch!—“enjoying” the Liberties.

We first repaired, with the view of spending a period of retirement, to a convenient lodging in Red Lion Street, where Mrs. Esther set herself seriously to resume the dress, manner, language, and feelings of a gentlewoman.

“We have been,” she said, “like the sun in eclipse. It is true that one does not cease to enjoy, under all circumstances, the pride of gentle birth, which has been my chief consolation during all our troubles. But if one cannot illustrate to the eyes of the world the dignified deportment and genteel appearance due to that position, the possession of the privilege is a mere private grace, like the gift of good temper, patience, or hope.”

At first and for some weeks we held daily conversations and consultations on the subject of dress. We were, as may be guessed, somewhat like Pocahontas, of Virginia, when she left the savages and came into the polite world—because we had to begin from the very first, having hardly anything in which a lady could go abroad, and very little in which she could sit at home. Truly delightful was it to receive every day the packages of brocades, lace, satins, silks, sarsnets, besides chintzes, muslins, woollen things, and fine linen wherewith to deck ourselves, and to talk with the dressmaker over the latest fashion, the most proper style for madam, a lady no longer young, and for me, who, as a girl, should be dressed modestly and yet fashionably.

“We must go fine, child,” said Mrs. Esther. “I, for my part, because a fine appearance is due to my position: you, because you are young and beautiful. The gallants, to do them justice, are never slow in running after a pretty face; but they are only fixed by a pretty face in a pretty setting.”

Alas! to think that my face, pretty or not, already belonged, willy-nilly, to a man who had never run after it.

Mrs. Esther found that not only the fashions of dress, but those of furniture, of language, of manners, and of thought, were changed since her long imprisonment began. We therefore made it our endeavour by reading papers, by watching people, and by going to such places as the Mall, the Park, and even the fashionable churches, to catch as far as possible, the mode. Mrs. Esther never quite succeeded, retaining to the last a touch of antiquated manners, an old-fashioned bearing and trick of speech, which greatly became her, though she knew it not. Meanwhile we held long and serious talk about the rust of thirty years, and the best way to wear it off.

In one of the sermons of the Reverend Melchior Smallbrook, a divine now forgotten, but formerly much read, the learned clergyman states that the sunshine of prosperity is only dangerous to that soul in which tares are as ready to spring as wheat: adducing as a remarkable example and proof of this opinion, the modern prelates of the Church of England, whose lives (he said) are always models to less fortunate Christians, although their fortunes are so great. Now in Mrs. Esther’s soul were no tares at all, so that the sunshine of prosperity caused no decrease or diminution of her virtues. She only changed for the better, and especially in point of cheerfulness and confidence. For instance, whereas we were formerly wont, being poorly clad, to creep humbly to church, sit in the seats reserved for the poor (which have no backs to them, because the bishops consider the backs of the poor to be specially strengthened by Providence, which hath laid such heavy burdens upon them), and afterwards spend the day sadly over Hervey’s “Meditations among the Tombs,” we now went in hoops, laces, mantles, or cardinals, with faces patched, to the new church in Queen Square, where we had front seats in the gallery, and after church we dined off roast meat, with pudding, and after dinner read such discourses as presented, instead of penitential meditations, a thankful, nay, a cheerful view of life. I am sure, for my own part, I found the change greatly for the better. But we made no new friends, because Mrs. Esther wished to remain in strict retirement until she had recovered what she called the Pimpernel Manner.

“It is a Manner, my dear, as you will perceive when I recover it, at once dignified and modest. My father and my grandfather, both Lord Mayors, possessed it to an eminent degree, and were justly celebrated for it. My poor sister would never have acquired it, being by nature too sprightly. I was gradually learning it when our misfortunes came. Naturally afterwards it would have been absurd to cultivate its further development. The Pimpernel Manner would have been thrown away in——such a place as that to which we retired.”

I am so stupid that I never clearly understood the Pimpernel Manner, even when Mrs. Esther afterwards assured me that she had now fully recovered it.

Meantime, my education was resumed in the lighter departments. No girl who had once tackled book-keeping, by single and double entry, could want any more solid instruction. My guardian played the harpsichord for me, while my dancing-master gave me lessons in the minuet; or she personated a duchess, a countess, or even the most exalted lady in the land, while the master, a pink of courtesy, who had once danced on the boards of Drury Lane, presented me dressed in hoops and a train. I was so diligent in dancing that I was soon ready, he assured me, to make a figure at any assembly, whether at Bath, Epsom, Tunbridge Wells, Vauxhall, or Ranelagh. But for the present these gaieties had to be postponed, partly because the Pimpernel Manner was slow in developing, and without it my guardian would not stir abroad, partly because we had no gentleman to go with us. Sir Miles Lackington would, I am sure, have gone with us, had we asked him to take us. But he was not to be depended upon if a bottle of wine came in the way. Solomon Stallabras would have gone, but the poor poet had no clothes fit for a polite assembly. Moreover, there was an objection, Mrs. Esther said, to both those gentlemen, that the fact of their being in the enjoyment of the Liberties of the Fleet might have been thrown in our teeth at a polite assembly.

It seemed to me then, being ignorant of the extreme wickedness of men, a grievous thing that gentlewomen cannot go whithersoever they please without the protection of a man. What sort of an age, I asked, is this, which pretends to have cast aside Gothic barbarism, yet cannot suffer its ladies to go unprotected for fear of insult or damage to their reputation? Scourers and Mohocks, I said, no longer infest the streets, which are for the most part secure even from footpads and purse-cutters. I was as yet, however, unacquainted with that class of man which loves to follow a woman, to stare at her, and to make her tremble with fear, being no better, but rather worse, than so many highwaymen, common bullies, and professed rogues.

Sir Miles Lackington did not desert us. Neither my cruelty, he said, nor his own unworthiness could persuade him to do that; he must needs follow and worship at the shrine of his unattainable sun and shining star—with such nonsense as men will still be talking even when they know that the woman is not for them.

On the occasion of the first visit I privately informed him that we wished to have no mention made of the place where we were once residing. He very kindly agreed to silence on this point, and we sustained between us a conversation after the manner of polite circles. Sir Miles would ask us, with a pinch of snuff, if we liked our present lodging—which was, as I have said, in Red Lion Street, not far from the fields and the Foundling Hospital—better than those to be obtained in Hill Street and Bruton Street, or some other place frequented by the best families. Madam, with a fashionable bow, would reply that we were favourably placed as regards air, that of Bloomsbury being good for persons like herself, of delicate chests; and that concerning educational conveniences for miss, she found the quarter superior to that mentioned by Sir Miles. Then the honest baronet would relate, without yawning or showing any signs of fatigue, such stories of fashionable life as he had learned from those who had lately come to the Fleet, or remembered from his short career among the world of fashion. We agreed, always without unnecessary waste of words, to consider him as a gentleman about town, familiar with the Great.

The Doctor came but rarely. He brought wise counsel. He was a miracle of wisdom. No one is ever so wise in the conduct of his friends’ affairs as he who has wrecked his own. Have we not seen far-seeing and prudent ministers of state, who have conducted the business of the nation with skill and success, yet cannot manage their own far more simple business?

Mrs. Esther talked to no one but to him about the past. She had no secrets from him. She even wished him, if possible, to share in her good fortune, and wanted him to appease his creditors with half of all that was hers. But he refused.

“My imprisonment,” he said, “is also my freedom. While I am lying in the Fleet I can go abroad as I please; I fear no arrest: my conscience does not reproach me when I pass a shop and think of what I owe the tradesman who keeps it, because my creditors have paid themselves by capture of my body. Your purse, dear madam, were it ten times as long, would not appease the hungry maw of all my creditors and lawyers. Of old, before I took refuge among the offal and off-scouring of humanity, the prodigal sons, and the swine, there was no street west of Temple Bar where I did not fear the voice of a creditor or expect the unfriendly shoulder-tap of a bailiff. Besides, were I free, what course would be open to me? Now I live in state, with the income of a dean: outside I should live in meanness, with the income of a curate. I will retire from my present position—call it cure of souls, madam—when the Church recognises merit by translating me from the Fleet market to a fat prebendal stall. And, believe me, Virtue may find a home even beside those stalls, and among those grunting swine.”

I understand now, being much older and abler to take a just view of things, that if my uncle could have obtained his discharge he would have been unwilling to take it. For, granted that he was a learned and eloquent man, that he would have attracted multitudes to hear him, learning and eloquence, in the Church, do not always obtain for a clergyman the highest preferment; the Doctor, who was no longer young, might have had to languish as a curate on forty or perhaps sixty pounds per annum, even though it became the fashion to attend his sermons. And, besides, his character was for ever gone, among his brethren of the cloth. A man who has been a Fleet parson is like one who has passed a morning in hedging and ditching. He must needs wash all over. Truly, I think that the Doctor was right. To exercise the functions of his sacred calling all the morning for profit, to drink with his friends all the evening, to spend a large portion of his gains in deeds of charity and generosity among a poor, necessitous, prodigal, greedy, spendthrift, hungry, thirsty, and shameful folk, who rewarded his liberality by a profusion of thanks, blessings, and good wishes, was more in accordance with the Doctor’s habits of thought. He persuaded himself, or tried to persuade others, that he was doing a good work in the morning; in the afternoon he performed works of charity; in the evening he abandoned himself to the tempter who led him to sing, drink, and jest among the rabble rout of Comus.

One morning he bade me put on my hat and walk with him, because he had a thing to say. I obeyed with fear, being certain he was going to speak about my unknown husband.

“Girl!” he said, as we walked past the last house in Red Lion Street and along the pathway which leads to the Foundling Hospital. “Girl, I have to remind you and to warn you.”

I knew well what was to be the warning.

“Remember, you are now seventeen and more; you are no longer a young and silly girl, you are a young woman; thanks to your friends, you have taken the position of a young gentlewoman, even an heiress. You will soon leave this quiet lodging and go where you will meet society and the great world; you are pretty and well-mannered; you will have beaux and gallants dangling their clouded canes at your heels and asking your favours. But you are married. Remember that: you are married. You must be careful not to let a single stain rest upon your reputation.”

“Oh, sir!” I cried, “I have endeavoured to forget that morning. Was that marriage real? The poor young gentleman was tipsy. Can a tipsy man be married?”

“Real?” The Doctor stood and gazed at me with angry eyes and puffed cheeks, so that the old terror seized me in spite of my fine frock and hoop. “Real? Is the girl mad? Am I not Gregory Shovel, Doctor of Divinity of Christ’s College, Cambridge? Not even the King’s most sacred Majesty is married in more workmanlike fashion. Let your husband try to escape the bond. Know that he shall be watched: let him try to set it aside: he shall learn by the intervention of learned lawyers, if he do not trust my word, that he is as much married as St. Peter himself.”

“Alas!” I said. “But how shall my husband love me?”

“Tut! tut! what is love? You young people think of nothing but love—the fond inclination of one person for another. Are you a pin the worse, supposing he never loves you? Love or no love, make up thy mind, child, that happy shall be thy lot. Be contented, patient, and silent. When the right day comes, thou shalt step forth to the world as Catherine, Lady Chudleigh.”

That day he said no more to me. But he showed that the subject was not out of his thoughts by inquiries into the direction and progress of my studies, which, he hinted, should be such as would befit my rank and position. Madam thought he meant my rank as her heiress, a position which could not be illustrated with too much assiduity.

Soon after we went to Red Lion Street, my uncle gave madam my bag of guineas.

“Here is the child’s fortune,” he said. “Let her spend it, but with moderation, in buying the frocks, fal-lals, and trifles which a young gentlewoman of fortune should wear. Grudge not the spending. Should more be wanting, more shall be found. In everything, my dear lady, make my niece an accomplished woman, a woman of ton, a woman who can hold her own, a woman who can go into any society, a woman fit to become the wife—well—the wife of a lord.”

It was on New Year’s Day that we left the Fleet; it was in the summer, at the end of June, when we decided that enough had been done to rub off the rust of that unfashionable place.

“You, my dear,” said Mrs. Esther, “have the sprightly graces of a well-born and well-bred young woman: I can present you in any society. I, for my part, have recovered the Pimpernel Manner. I can now make an appearance worthy of my father.”

I assured my kind lady that although, to be sure, I had never been able to witness the great original and model from which the Pimpernel Manner was derived, yet that no lady had so fine an air as herself; which was certainly true, madam being at once dignified and gifted with a formal condescension very pretty and uncommon.

Access to the polite world is more readily gained (by those who have no friends) at one of the watering-places than in London. Considering this, we counselled whether it would not be better to visit one, or all, of the English Spas, rather than to climb slowly and painfully up the ladder of London fashion.

Mrs. Esther at first inclined to Bath, which certainly (though it is a long journey thither), is a most stately city, provided with every requisite for comfort, possessing the finest Assembly Rooms and the most convenient lodgings. It also affords opportunities for making the acquaintance and studying the manners of the Great. Moreover, there can be no doubt that its waters are efficient in the cure of almost all disorders; and the social enjoyment of the hot bath, taken in the company of the wits and toasts who go to be parboiled together in that liquid Court of scandal, chocolate, and sweets, is surely a thing without a rival.

On the other hand, Tunbridge Wells is nearer London; the roads are good; a coach reaches the place in one day; and, so amazing is the rapidity of communication (in which we so far excel our ancestors), that the London morning papers reach the Wells in the evening, and a letter posted from the Wells in the morning can be answered in the following evening. Also the air is fine at Tunbridge, the waters wholesome, and the amusements are said to be varied. Add to this that it is greatly frequented by the better sort of London citizens, those substantial merchants with their proud and richly dressed wives and daughters, whom Mrs. Esther always looked upon as forming the most desirable company in the world. So that it was at first resolved to go to Tunbridge.

But while we were making our preparations to go there, a curious longing came upon Mrs. Esther to revisit the scenes of her youth.

“My dear,” she said, “I should like to see once more the Wells of Epsom, whither my father carried us every year when we were children. The last summer I spent there was after his death, in the dreadful year of 1720, when the place was crowded with Germans, Jews, and the people who flocked to London with schemes which were to have made all our fortunes, but which only ruined us, filled the prisons and madhouses, drove honest men upon the road, and their children to the gutters. Let us go to Epsom.”

Epsom Wells, to be sure, was no longer what it had been. Indeed, for a time, the place had fallen into decay. Yet of late, with their horse-racing in April and June, and the strange repute of the bone-setter Sally Wallin, the salubrity of the air on the Downs, the easy access to the town, which lieth but sixteen miles or thereabouts from Paul’s, and the goodness of the lodgings, the fame of the place had revived. The gentry of the country-side came to the Monday breakfasts and assemblies, when there was music, card-playing, and dancing; the old buildings were again repaired, and Epsom Wells for a few years was once more crowded. To me, as will presently be very well understood, the place will ever remain a dear romantic spot, sacred to the memory of the sweetest time in a woman’s life, when her heart goes out of her keeping, and she listens with fear and delight to the wooing of the man she loves.

We went there in the coach, which took about three hours. We arrived in the afternoon of a sunny day—it was a Friday, which is an unlucky day to begin a journey upon—in the middle of July. We were presently taken to a neat and clean lodging in Church Parade, where we engaged rooms at a moderate charge. The landlady, one Mrs. Crump, was the widow, she told us, of a respectable hosier of Cheapside, who had left her with but a slender stock. Her children, however, were in good service and thriving; and, with her youngest daughter, Cicely, she kept this lodging-house, a poor but genteel mode of earning a livelihood.

The first evening we sat at home until sunset, when we put on our hoods and walked under the trees which everywhere at Epsom afford a delightful shade during the heat of the day, and a romantic obscurity in the twilight. A lane or avenue of noble lime-trees was planted in the Church Parade. Small avenues of trees led to the houses, and formed porches with rich canopies of green leaves. There was a good deal of company abroad, and we could hear, not far off, the strains of the music to which they were dancing in the Assembly Rooms.

“We have done well, Kitty,” said Mrs. Esther, “to come to this place, which is far less changed than since last I came here. I trust it is not sinful to look back with pleasure and regret on the time of youth.” Here she sighed. “The good woman of the house, I perceive with pleasure, remembers the name of Pimpernel, and made me a becoming courtesy when I informed her of my father’s rank. She remembers seeing his Lord Mayor’s Show. There are, it appears, many families of the highest distinction here, with several nabobs, rich Turkey and Russian merchants, great lawyers, and county gentry. She assures me that all are made welcome, and that the assemblies are open to the whole company. And she paid a tribute to thy pretty face, my dear.”

In the morning we were awakened, to our surprise and delight, by a delectable concert of music, performed for us, by way of salutation or greeting, by the band belonging to the place. They played, in succession, a number of the most delightful airs, such as, “A-hunting we will go,” “Fain I would,” “Spring’s a-coming,” “Sweet Nelly, my heart’s delight,” and “The girl I left behind me.” The morning was bright, and a breeze came into my open window from the Surrey Downs, fresh and fragrant with the scent of wild flowers. My brain was filled with the most ravishing ideas, though I knew not of what.

“My dear,” said Mrs. Esther, at breakfast, “the compliment of the music shows the discernment of the people. They have learned already that we have pretensions to rank, and are no ordinary visitors, not haberdashers’ daughters or grocers’.”

(It is, we afterwards discovered, the rule of the place thus to salute new comers, without inquiry at all into their rank or fortune. We rewarded the players with half-a-crown from madam, and two shillings from myself.)

It is, surely, a delightful thing to dress one’s self in the morning to the accompaniment of sweet music. If I were a queen, I would have a concert of music every day, to begin when I put foot out of bed: to sing in tune while putting on one’s stockings: to dance before the glass while lacing one’s stays: to handle a comb as if it was a fan, and to brush one’s hair with a swimming grace, as if one was doing a minuet, while the fiddles and the flutes and the hautboys are playing for you. Before I had finished dressing, however, Cicely Crump, who was a lively, sprightly girl, with bright eyes, and little nose, about my own age, came to help me, and told me that those ladies who went abroad to take the air before breakfast wore in the morning an easy dishabille, and advised me to tie a hood beneath the chin.

“But not,” she said with a laugh, “not to hide too much of your face. What will they say to such a face at the ball?”

We followed her advice, and presently sallied forth. Although it was but seven o’clock, we found a goodly assemblage already gathered together upon the Terrace, where, early as it was, the shade of the trees was agreeable as well as beautiful. The ladies, who looked at us with curiosity, were dressed much like ourselves, and the gentlemen wore morning-gowns, without swords: some of the elder men even wore nightcaps, which seemed to me an excessive simplicity. Everybody talked to his neighbour, and there was a cheerful buzz of conversation.

“Nothing is changed, my dear,” said Mrs. Esther, looking about her with great satisfaction; “nothing except the dresses, and these not so much as we might have expected. I have been asleep, dear, like the beauty in the story, for thirty years. But she kept her youth, that lucky girl, while I—heigh-ho!”

Cicely came with us to show us the way. We went first along the Terrace and then to the New Parade, which was also beautifully shaded with elms and limes. Between them lies the pond, with gold and silver fish, very pretty to look at, and the tumble-down watch-house at one end. Then she showed us the pump-room.

“Here is the spring,” she said, “which cures all disorders: the best medicine in the world.”

There was in the room a dipper, as they call the women who hand the water to those who go to drink it. We were told that it was customary to pay our footing with half-a-crown; but we drank none of the water, which is not, like that of Tunbridge Wells, sweet and pleasant to the taste. Then Cicely led us to another building hard by, a handsome place, having a broad porch with columns, very elegant. This, it appeared, was the Assembly Room, where were held the public balls, concerts, and breakfasts. We entered and looked about us. Mrs. Esther recalled her triumphs in this very room, and shed a tear over the past. Then a girl accosted us, and begged permission to enter our names in a great book. This (with five shillings each by way of fees) made us free of all the entertainments of the season.

Near the Assembly Rooms was the coffee-house, used only by the gentlemen.

“They pretend,” said Cicely, “to come here for letter-writing and to read the news. I do not know how many letters they write, but I do know what they talk about, because I had it of the girl who pours out their coffee, and it is not about religion, nor politics, but all about the toast of the day.”

“What is the toast of the day?” I asked.

Cicely smiled, like a saucy baggage as she was, and said that no doubt Miss Kitty would soon find out.

“Already,” she said, “Mr. Walsingham is looking at you.”

I saw an old gentleman already dressed for the morning, with lace ruffles and a handkerchief for the neck of rich crimson silk, who sat on one of the benches beneath the trees, his hand upon a stick, looking at me with a sort of earnestness.

“Hush!” cried Cicely, whispering; “he is more than eighty years of age: he goes every year to Epsom, Bath, and Tunbridge—all three—and he can tell you the name of the toast in every place for fifty years, and describe her face.”

A “toast,” then, was another word for a young lady.

As we passed his bench, the old gentleman rose and bowed with great ceremony to madam.

“Your most obedient servant, madam,” he said, still looking at me. “I trust that the Wells will be honoured by your ladyship with a long stay. My name is Walsingham, madam, and I am not unknown here. Permit me to offer my services to you and to your lovely daughter.”

“My niece, sir.” Madam returned the bow with a curtsey as deep. “My niece, Miss Kitty Pleydell. We arrived last night, and we expect to find our stay so agreeable as to prolong it.”

“The Wells, madam, will be delighted.” He bowed again. “I hope to be of assistance—some little assistance—in making your visit pleasant. I have known Epsom Wells, and, indeed, Bath and Tunbridge as well, for fifty years. Every year has been made remarkable in one of these places by the appearance of at least one beautiful face: sometimes there have been even three or four, so that gentlemen have been divided in opinion. In 1731, for instance, a duel was fought at Tunbridge Wells, between my Lord Tangueray and Sir Humphrey Lydgate, about two rival beauties. Generally, however, the Wells acknowledge but one queen. Yesterday I was publicly lamenting that we had as yet no one at Epsom whom we could hope to call Queen of the Wells. Miss Kitty Pleydell”—again he bowed low—“I can make that complaint no longer. I salute your Majesty.”

“Oh, sir,” I said, abashed and confused, “you are jesting with me!”

He replied gravely, that he never jested on so serious a subject as the beauty of a woman. Then he hoped to see us again upon the Terrace or on the Downs in the course of the day, and left us with a low bow.

“I told you, miss,” said Cicely, “that it would not be long before you found out what is meant by a toast.”

She next took us to a book-shop, where we learned that for a crown we could carry home any book we pleased from the shop and read it at our ease; only that we must return it in as good condition as we took it out, which seems reasonable. The people in the shop, as are all the people at Epsom, were mighty civil; and madam, partly with a view of showing the seriousness of her reading, took down a volume of sermons, which I carried home for her.

Next day, however, she exchanged this for a volume of “Pamela,” which now began to occupy our attention almost as much as “Clarissa” had done, but caused fewer tears to flow. Now is it not a convenient thing for people who cannot afford to buy all they would read, thus to pay a subscription and to borrow books as many as they wish? I think that nothing has ever yet been invented so excellent for the spread of knowledge and the cultivation of taste. Yet it must not go too far either; for should none but the libraries buy new novels, poems, and other works of imagination, where would be the reward of the ingenious gentlemen who write them? No; let those who can afford buy books: let those who cannot buy all they can, and join the library for those they cannot afford to buy. What room looks more comfortably furnished than one which has its books in goodly rows upon the shelves? They are better than pictures, better than vases, better than plates, better than china monkeys; for the house that is so furnished need never feel the dulness of a rainy day.

There remained but two subscriptions to pay before our footing was fairly established.

The leader of the music presented himself, bowing, with his subscription-book in his hand. The usual amount was half a guinea. Madam gave a guinea, being half for herself, and half for me, writing down our names in the book. I saw, as we came away, that a little group of gentlemen quickly gathered round the leader and almost tore the book from his hand.

“They are anxious to find out your name, miss,” said Cicely. “Then they will go away and talk in the coffee-house, and wonder who you are and whence you came and what fortune you have. Yet they call us women gossips!”

Lastly, there was the clergyman’s book.

“Heaven forbid,” said madam, “that we pay for the music and let the prayers go starving!”

This done, we could return home, having fairly paid our way for everything, and we found at our lodgings an excellent country breakfast of cream, new-laid eggs, fresh wild strawberries from Durdans Park, delicate cakes of Mrs. Crump’s own baking, and chocolate, with Cicely to wait upon us.

It was the godly custom of the place to attend public worship after breakfast, and at the ringing of the bell we put on our hats and went to the parish church, where we found most of the ladies assembled. They were escorted to the doors of the sacred house by the gentlemen, who left them there. Why men (who are certainly greater sinners, or sinners in a bolder and more desperate fashion, than women) should have less need of prayers than we, I know not; nor why a man should be ashamed of doing what a woman glories in doing. After their drinkings, their duels, their prodigalities, and wastefulness, men should methinks crowd into the doors of every church they can find, women leading them thereto. But let us not forget that men, when they live outside the fashion and are natural, are by the bent of their mind generally more religiously disposed than women: and, as they make greater sinners, so also do they make more illustrious saints.

When we came out of the church (I forgot to say that we were now dressed and ready to make as brave a show as the rest) we found outside the doors a lane of gentlemen, who, as we passed, bowed low, hat in hand. At the end stood old Mr. Walsingham.

He stood with his hat raised high in air, and a smile upon his lined and crowsfooted face.

“What did I say, Miss Kitty?” he whispered. “Hath not the Queen of the Wells arrived?”

I do not know what I might have said, but I heard a cry of “Kitty! Kitty!” and, looking round, saw—oh, the joy!—none other than my Nancy, prettier than ever, though still but a little thing, who ran up to me and threw herself in my arms.

Nancy Levett herself, pretty and merry, prattling, rattling Nancy, not grown a bit, and hardly taller than my shoulder. I held her out at arm’s length.

“You here, Nancy?”

Then we kissed again.

“And not a bit changed, Nancy?”

“And oh! so changed, Kitty. So tall and grand. Come to my mother.”

Lady Levett was standing close by with Sir Robert, who took me by the shoulders and kissed my cheeks, forehead and lips in fatherly fashion.

“Gadso!” he cried. “This is brave indeed. Things are likely to go well at Epsom. We have got back our Kitty, wife.”

Lady Levett was colder. Perhaps she had misgivings on what had been done with me for the last twelvemonth. And then I, who had gone away a simple, rustic maid, was now in hoops, patches and powder.

“Kitty will tell us presently,” she said, “I doubt not what she has done, and under whose protection she is travelling.”

Then I hastened to present Mrs. Esther, who stood aside, somewhat embarrassed.

“Madam,” I said, “I present to you my benefactress and guardian, Mrs. Esther, to whose care I was entrusted by my uncle. Dear aunt, this is my Lady Levett. Mrs. Esther Pimpernel, madam, hath done me the singular kindness of calling me her niece.”

“My niece and daughter by adoption,” said that kind lady. “Your ladyship will be pleased, out of your goodness of heart, to hear the best report of this dear child’s health and conduct. The good principles, my lady, which she learned of you and of her lamented father, have borne fruit in virtues of obedience and duty.”

Both ladies made a deep reverence. Then said Lady Levett—“I assure you, my dear madam, I looked for nothing less in this dear child. From such a father as was hers, could aught but good descend? Madam, I desire your better acquaintance. For Kitty’s sake, I hope we may be friends.”

“Why,” said Sir Robert, “we are friends already. Kitty, thou art grown: thou art a fine girl. I warrant we shall have breaking of hearts before all is done. Epsom Wells was never so full of gallants. Well, breaking of hearts is rare sport, and seldom hurts the men, though they make so great a coil about it in their rhymes and nonsense. But have a care, both of you: sometimes the girls get their own little cockleshells of hearts broken in earnest.”

“I should like to see the man among them all who could break my heart,” said Nancy pertly, laughing.

“Yours?” her father asked, tapping her pretty rosy cheek. “It is such a little one, no one can find it: nevertheless, lass, it is big enough to carry all thy father’s in it, big as he is.”

Then we began to ask questions all together. I to inquire after the village and the hall, the church, the ponies, the garden, the hounds, the fruit, all the things we used to think about: and Will, they told me, was at home, but was coming to the Wells for certain races in which he would himself ride. Harry Temple was gone to London, but would perhaps come to Epsom as soon as he knew who was there. Why had I written not one single letter?

I blushed and hung my head. I could not tell the truth, for the sake of Mrs. Esther, how I was ashamed at first to speak of the place in which I found myself, and afterwards was afraid; but I should have to explain my silence.

“It was not,” I stammered, “that I was ungrateful to your ladyship for all your kindness. But things were strange at first, and there was nothing that I could take any pleasure in telling your ladyship. And a London letter from a simple girl, who can send no news of the great world, is a worthless thing to deliver by the post.”

“Nay, child,” said Lady Levett, “we should not have grudged the charge for good tidings of thy welfare.”

“Our Kitty,” said Mrs. Esther, colouring a little, for it is never pleasant to help at concealing, dissembling, or falsifying things, “has had a busy time of late. Your ladyship knows, doubtless, that her education was not completed. We have had masters and teachers of dancing, music, deportment, and the like during the last few months, and I trust that we shall find she will do credit to the instruction she has received. Meanwhile I have, for reasons which it would not interest your ladyship to learn, been living in great retirement. We had a lodging lately in Red Lion Street, not far from the Foundling Hospital, where the air is good and the situation quiet.”

We fell, presently, into a sort of procession. First went Lady Levett and Mrs. Esther (I overheard the latter speaking at length of her father, the Lord Mayor, of her grandfather, also the Lord Mayor, and of her last visit to Epsom), then came Nancy, Sir Robert, who held my hand, and myself. The music, which had stopped during prayers, began again now. The Terrace was crowded with the visitors, and Nancy began to point them out to me as we walked along.

“Look, child—oh! how beautiful you have grown!—there is Mr. Pagoda Tree—it is really Samuel Tree, or Obadiah Tree, or, I think, Crabapple Tree, but they all call him Pagoda Tree: he has made a quarter of a million in Bengal, and is come running to Bath, Epsom and Tunbridge, in search of a wife. With all his money I, for one, would not have him, the yellow little Nabob! He has five-and-twenty blacks at his lodgings, and they say he sticks dinner-knives into them if his curry be not hot enough. There goes the Dean of St. Sepulchre’s. He is come to drink the waters, which are good for a stomach enfeebled by great dinners; there is no better fox-hunter in the county, and no finer judge of port. Pity to be seventy years old when one has all the will and the power to go on doing good to the Christian Church by fox-hunting and drinking”—he was certainly a very red-faced divine, who looked as if this world was more in his thoughts than the next, where, so far as we know, fox-hunting will not be practised and port will not be held in esteem. “You see yonder little fribble, my dear—do not look at him, or it will make him think the better of himself: he is a haberdasher from town, who pretends to be a Templar. A fribble, Kitty—oh! you innocent, tall, beautiful creature!—a fribble is a thing made up of rags, wig, ruffles, wind, froth, amber cane, paint, powder, coat-skirts and sword. Nothing else, I assure you. No brains, no heart, no ears, no taste, nothing. There are many fribbles at the Wells, who will dance with you, talk to you, and—if you have enough money—would like to run away with you. Don’t throw yourself away on a fribble, Kitty. And don’t run away with anybody. Nothing so uncomfortable.

“That gallant youth in the red-coat is an officer, who had better be with his colours in America than showing his scarlet at the Wells. Yet he is a pretty fellow, is he not? Here are more clergymen——” One of them somewhat reminded me of my uncle, for he wore, like him, a full wig, a cassock of silk, and a flowing gown; also, he carried his head with the assurance which belongs to one who is a teacher of men, and respects his own wisdom. But he differed from my uncle in being sleek, which the famous Chaplain of the Fleet certainly was not. He dropped his eyes as he went, inwardly rapt, no doubt, by heavenly thoughts.

“That,” Nancy went on, “is the great Court preacher, the Reverend Bellamour Parolles, Master of Arts. The shabby divine beside him is the Vicar of Sissinghurst, in Kent, who is here to drink the waters for a complaint that troubles the poor man. What a difference!”

The country parson went dressed in a grey-striped calamanco nightgown; he wore a wig which had once been white, but was now, by the influence of this uncertain climate, turned to a pale orange; his brown hat was encompassed by a black hatband; his bands, which might have been cleaner, decently retired under the shadow of his chin; his grey stockings were darned with blue worsted. As they walked together it seemed to me that the country parson was saying to the crowd: “You see—I am in rags; I go in darns, patches, and poverty; yet by my sacred profession and my learning, I am the equal of my brother in silk.” While the more prosperous one might have been thought to say: “Behold the brotherhood and equality of the Church, when I, the great and fashionable, know no difference between myself and my humble brethren!”

In the afternoon and evening there was, however, this difference, that the town parson was seen at the Assembly Rooms among the ladies, while his country brother might have been seen at the Crown, over a pipe and a brown George full of strong October.

Then Nancy went on to point out more of the visitors. There were merchants, well known on the Royal Exchange; courtiers from St. James’s; country gentlemen, with their madams, brave in muslin pinners and sarsnet hoods, from estates remote from the great town, where they had never ceased to consider themselves the feudal lords of the people as well as the land: there were younger sons full of talk about horses and hounds: there were doctors in black, with bag-wigs: there were lawyers in vacation, their faces as full of sharpness as is the face of a fox: there were young fellows not yet launched upon the fashionable world, who looked on with the shyness and impudence of youth, trying to catch the trick of dress, manner and carriage which marks the perfect beau; there were old fellows, like Mr. Walsingham, who sat on the benches, or ran about, proud of their activity, in attendance on the ladies. It was indeed a motley crew.

“They say that Epsom has come into fashion again,” Nancy went on. “I know not. Tunbridge is a dangerous rival. Yet this year the place is full. That young man coming to speak to me you may distinguish by your acquaintance, my dear.”

What a distinction! “He is—I hope your lordship is well this morning—he is the young Lord Eardesley, whose father is but just dead. He is a Virginian by birth, and all his fortune, with which the family estates have been recovered, was made by tobacco on his plantations. He has hundreds of negro slaves, besides convicts. Yet he is of grave and serious disposition, and abhors the smell of a pipe. Peggy Baker thinks to catch his lordship. Yet coronets are not so easily won.”

She stopped again to speak to some ladies of her acquaintance.

“Well, my dear, as for our manner of life here, it is the same as at all watering-places. We dress and undress: we meet at church, and on the Terrace and the New Parade, and the Assembly Rooms: we go to the Downs to see races before dinner and after dinner: we talk scandal: we say wicked things about each other: we try to catch the eyes of the men: we hate each other with malice and uncharitableness: we raffle: we gamble: we listen to the music: we exchange pretty nothings with the beaux: we find out all the stories about everybody here: and we dance at the Assembly.”

She stopped to breathe.

“This is a rattle,” said Sir Robert, “which never stops—like the clack of the water-wheel. Go on, Nan.”

“One of our amusements,” she went on, tossing her little head, “is to buy strawberries, cherries, vegetables, salad, fowls and ducks of the higglers who bring them to the market, or carry them round to the houses of the town. The gentlemen, I observe, derive a peculiar satisfaction in chucking those of the higglers who are young and good-looking under the chin. This, I confess, is a pleasure which I cannot for my own part understand.”

“Saucy baggage!” said her father.

“You and I, Kitty,” she continued, “who do not want to chuck farmers’ daughters under the chin, may, when we are tired of the races or the promenade, take an airing in a coach, or watch the raffling, or the card-players. Here they play cards all day long, except on Sunday. Or we may go to the book-shop and hear the latest scandal: or we may go home and trim our own things and talk about frocks, and patches, and poetry, and lace, and lovers. But, for Heaven’s sake, Kitty, do not, in this censorious place, make that pretty face too cheap, and let no one follow you on the Terrace but the best of the company.”

“Good advice,” said Sir Robert. “This girl of mine has got her father’s head.”

“As for cards,” Nancy went on, taking no notice of her father’s interruption, “the tables are always laid in the Assembly Room: the ladies mostly play at quadrille, and the gentlemen at whist; but there are tables for hazard, lansquenet, faro, and baccarat, where all comers are welcome, provided they have got money to lose and can lose it without also losing their temper, a thing we women throw away daily, and lose without regarding it, so cheap and abundant a commodity it is. My dear, so long as I value my face, I will never touch the odious delightful things. Yet the joy of winning your enemy’s money! Oh! oh! And the dreadful grief to lose your own!

“There is a concert this evening. I would not advise you to attend it, but to wait for Monday’s ball—there to make your first appearance. I shall go, because some of my swains are going to play with the paid musicians; and of course I look to see them break down and spoil the whole music, to their great confusion.

“But Monday—Monday is our day of days. All Sunday we think about it, and cannot say our prayers for thinking of the dear delightful day. And what the clergyman preaches about none of us know, for wishing the day was here. On Monday we have a great public breakfast to begin with: the gentry come to it from all the country-side, with the great people from Durdans: in fine weather we breakfast under the trees upon the Terrace while the music plays. You will find it pleasant to take your chocolate to the strains of flute and clarionet, French horn and hautboy; the sunshine raises the spirits, and the music fills the head with pretty fancies. Besides, every girl likes to be surrounded by tall fellows who, though we care not a pin for one of them, are useful for providing conversation, cakes, and creams, telling stories, saying gallant things, fetching, carrying, and making Peggy Baker jealous. On Monday, too, there are always matches on the Downs: we pretend to be interested in the horses: we come back to dinner and a concert: in the afternoon some of the gentlemen give tea and chocolate; and at six o’clock, the fiddles tune up—oh, the delicious scraping!—we all take our places: and then begins—oh! oh! oh!—the dear, delightful ball! My child, let Miss Peggy Baker dress her best, put on her finest airs, and swim about with her most languishing sprawl, I know who shall outshine her, and be the Queen of the Wells.”

“Yourself, dear Nancy?”

“No; not myself, dear Nancy,” she replied, imitating. “Oh! you well may blush for shame, pretty hypocrite! ’Tis yourself, dear Kitty, that I mean. You shall burst upon their astonished gaze like Venus rising from the sea in our picture at home, only better dressed than that poor creature!”

Just then a young lady, with the largest hoop I had ever seen, with patches and powder, and accompanied by three or four gentlemen, came slowly along the walk. As she drew near she looked at me with curiosity. She was a tall girl—nearly as tall as myself—with features rather larger than ordinary, and as she moved I understood what Nancy meant by languishing and swimming.

Nancy ran to meet her, taking her by both hands, and affecting a mighty joy.

“Dear Miss Peggy,” she began, “I am charmed to see you looking so well and lovely. How that dress becomes your shape! with what an air sits that hat!”

“Oh, Miss Nancy!” Miss Peggy swam and languished, agitating her fan and half shutting her eyes, which were very large and limpid. “Praise from such a judge of beauty and dress as yourself is rare indeed. What should we poor women do without the discrimination of our own sex. Men have no discernment. A well-dressed woman and a draggletail are all one to them.”

“Not all men, dear Miss Peggy,” continued Nancy, her eyes sparkling. “Mr. Walsingham was only saying this morning that you are, like himself, a proof of the salubrity of the Wells, since it is now the fifth season——”

“The third, dear child,” Miss Peggy interrupted, with a tap of her fan on Nancy’s knuckles—indeed she deserved it. “I am very much obliged to Mr. Walsingham, whose tongue is free with all the ladies at the Wells. It is but yesterday since he said of you——”

“This is my friend, Miss Kitty Pleydell,” said Nancy quickly, rubbing her knuckles. “Kitty, my dear, you have heard of the beautiful Peggy Baker, last year the Toast of Tunbridge Wells, and the year before the Toast of Bath. Up to the present she has been our pride. On Monday evening you shall see her in her bravest attire, the centre of attraction, envied by us poor homely creatures, who have to content ourselves with the rustic beaux, the parsons, the lawyers, and the half-pay officers.”

Now, whether this artful girl did it on purpose, or whether it was by accident, I know not: but every word of this speech contained an innuendo against poor Miss Peggy. For it was true that she had been for two years following a Toast, but she was still unmarried, and without a lover, though she had so many men for ever in her train; and it was also true that among her courtiers at Epsom, the little band who held back while the ladies talked, there were, as I afterwards learned, at least three rustic beaux, two lawyers, a fashionable parson, and six half-pay officers. However, she disguised whatever resentment she might have felt, very kindly bade me welcome to the Wells, hoped that I should enjoy the place, told Nancy that her tongue run away with her, and that she was a saucy little baggage, tapped her knuckles for the second time with her fan, and moved away.

When Nancy had finished telling me of the amusements of the place and the people—I omit most of what she said as to the people because, although doubtless true, the stories did not redound to their credit, and may now very well be forgotten—we left the Terrace, Sir Robert now joining madam, and looked at the stalls and booths which were ranged along the side. They were full of pretty things exhibited for sale, and instead of rude prentice boys for salesmen they were good-looking girls, with whom some of the gentlemen were talking and laughing.

“More chin-chucking, my dear,” said Nancy.

It was the fashion to have a lottery at almost every stall, so that when you bought anything you received a ticket with your purchase, which entitled you to a chance of the prize. When you chose a bottle of scent, the girl who gave it you handed with it a ticket which gave you the chance of winning five guineas: with a pair of stockings came a ticket for a ten-guinea lottery. It was the same thing with all the shops. A leg of mutton bought at the butcher’s might procure for the purchaser the sum of twenty guineas; the barber who dressed your hair presented you with a chance for his five-guinea draw; the very taverns and ordinaries had their lotteries, so that for every sixpenny plate of boiled beef a ’prentice had his chance with the rest, and might win a guinea; you ordered a dozen oysters, and they came with the fishmonger’s compliments and a ticket for his lottery, the first prize of which would be two guineas, the drawing to take place on such a day, with auditors appointed to see all fair, and school children named to pull out the tickets; even the woman who sold apples and cherries in a basket loudly bellowed along the street that she had a half-crown draw, a five-shilling draw, and so on. Every one of us treasured up the tickets, but I never met any who won. Yet we had the pleasure of attending the drawing, dreaming of lucky numbers, and spending our prizes beforehand. I am sure that Nancy must have spent in this way many hundreds of pounds during the season, and by talking over all the fine things she would buy, the way in which their exhibition upon her little figure would excite the passion of envy in the breast of Peggy Baker and others, and her own importance thus bedecked, she had quite as much pleasure out of her imaginary winnings as if they had been real ones. It is a happy circumstance for mankind that they are able to enjoy what they never can possess, and to be, in imagination, the great, the glorious, the rich, the powerful personages which they can never, in the situation wherein Providence has placed them, hope to become.

Presently we went home to dinner, which was served for us by Cicely Crump. After dinner, while Mrs. Esther dozed, Cicely told me her history. Her father, she said, had been a substantial tradesman in Cheapside, and though little of stature, was in his youth a man of the most determined courage and resolution. When only just out of his apprenticeship he fell in love with a beautiful young lady named Jenny Medlicott (daughter of the same Alderman Medlicott whose ruin brought poor Mrs. Esther to destruction): as he knew that he could never get the consent of the alderman, being poor and of obscure birth, and knowing besides that all is fair in love, this lad of mettle represented himself to his nymph as a young gentleman of the Temple, son of a country squire. In this disguise he persuaded her to run away with him, and they were married. But when they returned to London they found that the alderman was ruined, and gone off his head. Therefore they separated, the lady going to Virginia with Lady Eardesley, mother of the young lord now at Epsom, and the husband going back to the shop. After the death of poor Jenny he married again. “And,” said Cicely, “though my mother is no gentlewoman, one cannot but feel that she might have been Miss Jenny Medlicott herself had things turned out differently. And that makes all of us hold up our heads. And as for poor father, he never forgot his first wife, and was always pleased to relate how he ran away with her all the way to Scotland, armed to the teeth, and ready, for her sake, to fight a dozen highwaymen. Such a resolute spirit he had!”

Then Nancy Levett came, bringing with her a milliner, Mrs. Bergamot.

“Kitty,” she cried, “I cannot rest for thinking of your first ball, and I have brought you Mrs. Bergamot to advise. My dear, you must be well dressed.” Then she whispered: “Do you want money, dear? I have some.”

I told her I had as much as a hundred and twenty guineas, at which she screamed with delight.

“Kitty!” she cried again, clasping my hands. “A hundred guineas! a hundred guineas! and twenty more! My dear, that odd twenty, that poor overflowing of thy rich measure, is the utmost I could get for this season at the Wells. Oh! happy, happy girl, to have such a face, such a shape, such eyes, such hair, such hands and feet, and a hundred and twenty guineas to set all off!”

She sat down, clasped her hands, and raised her eyes to Heaven as if in thankfulness. I think I see her now, the little dainty merry maid, so arch, so apt, sitting before me with a look which might be of envy or of joy. She had eyes so bright, a mouth so little, dimples so cunning, a cheek so rosy and a chin so rounded, that one could not choose but love her.

“Miss Pleydell,” she said to the milliner, “has not brought all her things from London. You must get what she wants at once, for Monday’s ball. Now, let us see.”

Then we held a parliament of four, counting Cicely, over the great question of my frocks. Nancy was prime minister, and did all the talking, turning over the things.

“Let me see, Mrs. Bergamot. Fetch us, if you have them—what you have—in flowered brocades—all colours—violet, pink, Italian posies, rose, myrtle, jessamine, anything; a watered tabby would become you, Kitty; any painted lawns,—silks and satins would be almost too old for you: do not forget the patches à la grecque—Kitty, be very careful of the patches; gauzes, what you have, Mrs. Bergamot; we want more hoods, a feathered muff, stomacher, Paris nets, eau de Chypre or eau de luce, whichever you have; ear-rings are no use to you, my poor child. Pity that they did not pierce your ears: see the little drops dangling at mine. At any rate, thank Heaven that we neither of us want vermilion for the cheeks. Poor Peggy! she paints these two years and more. Ruffs, Mrs. Bergamot, and tippets, cardinals, any pretty thing in sarsnets, and what you have in purple. Kitty, purple is your colour. You shall have a dress all purple for the next ball. Ah! if I could carry purple! But you, Kitty, with your height and figure—stand up, child—why, she will be Juno herself!”

“Truly,” said the dressmaker, “as for Miss Pleydell, purple has come into fashion in pudding-time, as folk say.”

“A pretty woman,” Nancy went on, examining me as if I had been a dummy, “not a pretty ‘little thing’ like me, is as rare in Epsom as a black swan or a white blackbird, or green yellow-hammer, or a red blue tit.”

When the dressmaker was gone, and we were left alone, Nancy began again, out of her great experience, to talk of the place we were in.

“My dear,” she said, “before one’s father one cannot say all that one would wish”—could such wisdom be possible at seventeen-and-a-half? “This is a very shocking and wicked place; we used to be taught that girls ought to sit in a corner, after they had put on their best things, and wait to be spoken to, and not to think about attracting the men; and not, indeed, to think about the men at all, save in their own room, where they might perhaps pray that if there were any men in the world not addicted to gambling, drinking, cursing, hunting, fighting, and striking, those men might be led by Heaven to cast eyes of love upon them. Oh!”—here she held up her hands and shook her head just like a woman four times her age, and steeped in experience—“in this place it is not long that the girls sit in a corner, and, indeed, I do not greatly love corners myself; but the very wives, the matrons, the married women, my dear,”—her voice rose with each word till it had mounted nearly to the top of the possible scale,—“are coquettes, who interfere with the girls, and would have the gallants dangling at their heels. As for their husbands, they are the last persons considered worthy of their notice; they put on their dresses and deck themselves out to please anybody rather than the persons whom it should be their only study to please.”

“Nancy,” I whispered, “when you are married, will you never, never dress to please anybody but your husband?”

“Why,” she replied, “my father, my mother, my children (if I have any), my friends will be pleased to see me go fine. But not for lovers—oh!”

We agreed that would-be lovers should be received and properly dealt with before marriage.

“Bashfulness, here,” continued the pretty moralist, “is—Heaven help us!—lack of breeding; what goes down is defiance of manners and modesty. Propriety is laughed at; noise is wit; laughter is repartee; most of the women gamble; nearly all are in debt; nobody reads anything serious; and we backbite each other perpetually.”

I know not what had put her in so strange a mood for moralising.

“However,” she said, “now that you are come, we shall get on better. I have made up my mind that you are to be the Toast of the season. I shall set you off, because you are brown and I am fair; you are tall, and I am short; you are grave, and I am merry; you are thoughtful, and I am silly; you have brown eyes, and I have blue. We will have none but the best men about us; we will set such an example as will shame the hoydens of girls and tame the Mohocks among the men. Miss Lamb of Hackney, who thinks herself a beauty, will then be ashamed to jump about and scream at the Assembly with nothing over her skinny shoulders. Peggy Baker shall have after her none but the married men (who are of no possible use except to spoil a girl’s reputation), although she sighs and swims and sprawls with her eyes half shut. Do you know that she sat for her portrait to Zincke, at Marylebone Gardens, as Anne Boleyn, and was painted with eyelashes down to the corners of her mouth?”

“Nancy,” I cried, “you are jealous of Miss Peggy Baker.”

She laughed, and talked of something else. From this I conjectured that Peggy had said or reported something which offended her. What had really been said, I learned afterwards, was that Nancy was running after Lord Eardesley, which was unkind as well as untrue.

“Last year,” she said, “after you went away, nothing would serve my mother but a visit to Bath. It is not so gay as Tunbridge Wells, because the company are mostly country folk, like ourselves, who stand upon their dignity; but it is better than this place, where there are so many London cits that it passes one’s patience, sometimes, to see their manners”—really, Nancy must have been seriously put out. “However, I dare say Bath is as wicked as any of the watering towns, when you come to know it. I liked the bathing. What do you think, Kitty, of everybody promenading in the water up to their chins—that is to say, the little people, like me, up to their noses (only I wore pattens to make myself higher), and the tall men up to their shoulders, in hot water? Everybody frolicking, flirting, and chattering, while japanned trays float about covered with confectionery, tea, oils, and perfumes for the ladies; and when you go away, your chair is nothing but a tub full of hot water, in which you are carried home. We stayed there all July and August, though my mother would have kept me, if she could, from the baths till I was bigger. Harry Temple was there, too, part of the time.”

“And how doth Harry?”

“He is a good honest fellow,” said Nancy, “though conceited and a prig; his mouth full of learned words, and his head full of books. He seemed to pine after your departure, Kitty, but soon recovered himself, and now eats and drinks again as before. He found some congenial spirits from Oxford at Bath, and they used to talk of Art, and pictures (when any one was listening), and bronzes, and all sorts of things that we poor people know nothing of.”

Then she told me how Harry had made a poem upon me, after my departure, which he turned into Latin, Greek, and Italian, and had given Nancy a copy. And how Will had christened one pup Kitty, and another Pleydell, and a third Kitty Pleydell, and was casting around how to give a fourth puppy my name as well.

It seemed so long ago that I had almost forgotten poor rustic Will, with his red face, his short sturdy figure, and his determination.

“Dear Kitty,” said Nancy, “if thou couldst take a fancy for our Will—he is a brave lad, though dull of parts and slow of apprehension. As for Harry”—here she stopped, and blushed.

I remembered my secret, and blushed as well (but for guilt and shame); while poor Nancy blushed in maiden modesty.

“Dear Nancy,” I replied, kissing her, “believe me, but I could never marry your brother Will. And as for Harry——”

“As for Harry,” she echoed, with downcast eyes.

It was easy to read her secret, though she could not guess mine.

“As for Harry,” I said, “where could he be better bestowed than——”

Here I kissed her again, and said no more, because between two women what more need be said?

Alas! I had quite forgotten—indeed, I never suspected—that I was actually engaged to become the wife of both Harry and Will, who was at this same time the wife of Lord Chudleigh. And both men were on their way to Epsom to claim the promise.