[Illustration:  “IN THE BAY OF BISCANY O”

The Last Sweet Thing in Hats and Walking-Sticks.—­Punch, September 27, 1862.]

She is light of heart, and perhaps a little of head!  Her worst trouble is when the captain gives the wing of the fowl to some other darling who might be her twin-sister; her most terrible nightmare is when she dreams that great stupid Captain Sprawler upsets a dish of trifle over her new lace dress with the blue satin slip; but next morning she is herself again, and rides in the Row, and stops to speak with that great stupid Captain Sprawler, who is very nice to look at, whose back is very beautiful, and who sprawls most gracefully over the railings, and pays her those delightful, absurd compliments about her and her horse “being such a capital pair,” while, as a foil to so much grace and splendour, a poor little snub-nosed, ill-dressed, ill-conditioned dwarf of a snob looks on, sucking the top of his cheap cane in abject admiration and hopeless envy!  Then she pats and kisses the nice soft nose of Cornet Flinders’s hunter, which is “deucedly aggravating for Cornet Flinders, you know”—­but when that noble sportsman is frozen out and cannot hunt, she plays scratch-cradle with him in the boudoir of her father’s country house, or pitches chocolate into his mouth from the oak landing; and she lets him fasten the skates on to her pretty feet.  Happy cornet!  And she plays billiards with her handsome cousin—­a guardsman at least—­and informs him that she is just eighteen to his love—­and stands under the mistletoe and asks this enviable relation of hers to show her what the garroter’s hug is like; and when he proceeds to do so she calls out in distress because his pointed waxed moustache has scratched her pretty cheek; and when Mr. Punch is there, at dinner, she and a sister darling pull crackers across his August white waistcoat, and scream in pretty terror at the explosion; to that worthy’s excessive jubilation, for Mr. Punch is Leech himself, and nothing she does can ever be amiss in his eyes!

Sometimes, indeed, she is seriously transfixed herself, and bids Mr. Tongs, the hairdresser, cut off a long lock of her hair where it will not be missed—–­and she looks so lovely under the smart of Cupid’s arrow that we are frantically jealous of the irresistible warrior for whom the jetty tress is destined.  In short, she is innocence and liveliness and health incarnate—­a human kitten.

When she marries the gilded youth with the ambrosial whiskers, their honeymooning is like playing at being married, their heartless billings and cooings are enchanting to see.  She will have no troubles—­Leech will take good care of that; her matrimonial tiffs will be of the slightest; hers will be a well-regulated household; the course of her conjugal love will run smooth in spite of her little indiscretions—­for, like Bluebeard’s wife, she can be curious at times, and coax and wheedle to know the mysteries of