‘Ah!’ said Isabel, playfully, lifting up a sweeter face than had ever been admired in Miss Conway, ’if you will make your kittens such little romps, what would you have but mending?’

’Is it my fault?  I am very sorry I entailed such a business on you.  You were at that frock when I went to evening prayers at the Union, and it is not mended yet.’

’Almost; and see what a perfect performance it is, all the spots joining as if they had never been rent.  I never was so proud of anything as of my mending capabilities.  Besides, I have not been doing it all the time:  this naughty little Fanny was in such a laughing mood, that she would neither sleep herself nor let the rest do so; and Kitty rose up out of her crib, and lectured us all.  Now, don’t wake them—­no, you must not even kiss the twin cherries; for if they have one of papa’s riots, they will hardly sleep all night.’

’Then you must take me away; it is like going into a flower-garden, and being told not to gather.’

’Charlotte is almost ready to come to them, and in the meantime here is something for you to criticise,’ said she, taking from the recess of her matronly workbasket a paper with a pencilled poem, on the Martyrs of Carthage, far more terse and expressive than anything she used to write when composition was the object of the day.  James read and commented, and was disappointed when they broke off short—­

‘Ah! there baby woke.’

’Some day I shall give you a subject.  Do you know how Sta.  Francesca Romana found in letters of gold the verse of the Psalm she had been reading, and from which she had been five times called away to attend to her household duties?’

‘I thought you were never to pity me again—­’

‘Do you call that pitying you?’

‘Worse,’ said Isabel, smiling.

’Well, then, what I came for was to ask if you can put on your bonnet, and take a walk in the lanes this lovely evening.’

A walk was a rare treat to the busy mother, and, with a look of delight, she consented to leave her mending and her children to Charlotte.  There seldom were two happier beings than that pair, as they wandered slowly, arm-in-arm, in the deep green lanes, in the summer twilight, talking sometimes of the present, sometimes of the future, but with the desultory, vague speculation of those who feared little because they knew how little there was to fear.

‘It is well they are all girls,’ said James, speaking of that constant topic, the children; ’we can manage their education pretty well, I flatter myself, by the help of poor Clara’s finishing governess, as Louis used to call you.’

’If the edge of my attainments be not quite rusted off.  Meantime, you teach Kitty, and I teach nothing.’

‘You don’t lose your singing.  Your voice never used to be so sweet.’

’It keeps the children good.  But you should have seen Kitty chaunting ‘Edwin and Angelina’ to the twins this morning, and getting up an imitation of crying at ‘turn Angelina, ever dear,’ because, she said, Charlotte always did.’