Mrs. Berry immediately dried her eyes to radiance.  “Young, my dear!  Nonsense!  There’s no so much harm in being young, here and there.  I knew an Irish lady was married at fourteen.  Her daughter married close over fourteen.  She was a grandmother by thirty!  When any strange man began, she used to ask him what pattern caps grandmothers wore.  They’d stare!  Bless you! the grandmother could have married over and over again.  It was her daughter’s fault, not hers, you know.”

“She was three years younger,” mused Lucy.

“She married beneath her, my dear.  Ran off with her father’s bailiff’s son.  ‘Ah, Berry!’ she’d say, ’if I hadn’t been foolish, I should be my lady now—­not Granny!’ Her father never forgave her—­left all his estates out of the family.”

“Did her husband always love her?” Lucy preferred to know.

“In his way, my dear, he did,” said Mrs. Berry, coming upon her matrimonial wisdom.  “He couldn’t help himself.  If he left off, he began again.  She was so clever, and did make him so comfortable.  Cook! there wasn’t such another cook out of a Alderman’s kitchen; no, indeed!  And she a born lady!  That tells ye it’s the duty of all women!  She had her saying ‘When the parlour fire gets low, put coals on the ketchen fire!’ and a good saying it is to treasure.  Such is man! no use in havin’ their hearts if ye don’t have their stomachs.”

Perceiving that she grew abstruse, Mrs. Berry added briskly:  “You know nothing about that yet, my dear.  Only mind me and mark me:  don’t neglect your cookery.  Kissing don’t last:  cookery do!”

Here, with an aphorism worthy a place in The Pilgrim’S Scrip, she broke off to go posseting for her dear invalid.  Lucy was quite well; very eager to be allowed to rise and be ready when the knock should come.  Mrs. Berry, in her loving considerateness for the little bride, positively commanded her to lie down, and be quiet, and submit to be nursed and cherished.  For Mrs. Berry well knew that ten minutes alone with the hero could only be had while the little bride was in that unattainable position.

Thanks to her strategy, as she thought, her object was gained.  The night did not pass before she learnt, from the hero’s own mouth, that Mr. Richards, the father of the hero, and a stern lawyer, was adverse to his union with this young lady he loved, because of a ward of his, heiress to an immense property, whom he desired his son to espouse; and because his darling Letitia was a Catholic—­Letitia, the sole daughter of a brave naval officer deceased, and in the hands of a savage uncle, who wanted to sacrifice this beauty to a brute of a son.  Mrs. Berry listened credulously to the emphatic narrative, and spoke to the effect that the wickedness of old people formed the excuse for the wildness of young ones.  The ceremonious administration of oaths of secrecy and devotion over, she was enrolled in the hero’s band, which now numbered three, and