After she had asked every sort of thing about you under the sun, she kept giving longing glances at the dummy’s cards; so I said, “Oh!  Aunt Maria, I am afraid I am keeping you from your whist.”  As soon as I could make her hear, you should have seen how she hopped up like a two-year-old into the vacant seat; and they were far more serious about it than any one was at Nazeby, where they had hundreds on, and Aunt Maria and the others only played for counters—­that long mother-o’-pearl fish kind.  I looked at a book on the table, Lady Blessington’s “Book of Beauty,” and I see then every one got born with champagne-bottle shoulders.  Had they been paring them for generations before, I wonder?  Because old John, the keeper at Hendon, told me once that the best fox-terriers arrive now without any tails, their mothers’ and grand-mothers’ and great-grandmothers’ having been cut off for so long; but I wonder, if the fashion changed, how could they get long tails again?  There must be some way, because all of us now have square shoulders.  But what was I saying?  Oh! yes, when I had finished the “Beauty Book,” I heard Aunt Maria getting so cross with the old boy opposite her.  “You’ve revoked, Major Orwell,” she said, whatever that means.

[Sidenote:  An Old English Dinner]

Then hot spiced port came in—­it was such a close night—­and they all had some, and so did I, and it was good; and then candles came. Such lovely silver, and so beautifully cleaned; and Aunt and Uncle kissed me.  I dodged Lady Farrington’s false teeth, because, after her cap incident, she might have bitten me.  And Uncle said, “Too late, too late for a little one to sit up—­no beauty sleep!” And Aunt Maria said, “Tut, tut!” and I thought it must be the middle of the night—­it felt like it.  But do you know, Mamma, when I got upstairs to my room it was only half-past ten!

I have such a huge room, with a four-post feather bed in it.  I had let Agnes go to bed directly after her supper, with a toothache, so I had to get undressed by myself; and I was afraid to climb in from the side, it was so high up.  But I found some steps with blue carpet on them, as well as a table with a Bible, and a funny old china medicine spoon, and glass and water-jug on it; and the steps did nicely, for when I got to the top, I just took a header into the feathers.  It seemed quite comfy at first, but in a few minutes, goodness gracious, I was suffocated!  And it was such a business getting the whole mass on the floor; and then I did not know very well how to make the bed again, and I had not a very good night, and overslept myself in the morning.  So I got down late for prayers.  Uncle John reads them, and Aunt Maria repeats responses whenever she thinks best, as she can’t hear a word; but I suppose she counts up, and, from long habit, just says “Amen” when she gets to the end of—­thirty, say—­fancying that will be right; and it is generally.  Only Uncle John stopped in the middle to say, “Damn that dog!” as Fido was whining and scratching outside, so that put her out and brought in the “Amen” too soon.