e
expected lecture on the allegories.

When the Rickworth party had taken leave, Mr. Wingfield, the last guest,
was heard to observe that Miss Marstone was an admirable person, a
treasure to any parish.

'Do you wish for such a treasure in your own?' said Mr. Fotheringham,
bluntly.

The curate shook his head, and murmuring something about Brogden being
already as fortunate as possible, departed in his turn: while Arthur
ejaculated, 'There's a step, Wingfield. Why, Theodora, he was setting up
a rival.'

'Who is she?' said Theodora. 'Where did Emma pick her up?'

'Emma was struck with her appearance--'

The gentlemen all exclaimed so vehemently, that Violet had to repeat
it again, whereupon Mr. Fotheringham muttered, 'Every one to his taste;'
and Arthur said there ought to be a law against women making themselves
greater frights than nature designed.

'So, it is a fit of blind enthusiasm,' said John.

'Pray do you partake it?' asked Percy. 'How do you feel after it?'

'Why, certainly, I never met with a person of more conversation,' said
John.

'Delicately put!' said Arthur, laughing heartily. 'Why, she had even
begun lecturing my father on the niggers!'

'I would not be Lady Elizabeth!' said Mr. Fotheringham.

'Those romantic exaggerations of friendship are not satisfactory,'
said John. 'Emma is too timid to be eccentric herself at present; but a
governing spirit might soon lead her on.'

'That it might,' said Theodora, 'as easily as I used to drag her, in
spite of her terrors, through all the cows in the park. I could be worse
to her than any cow; and this Ursula--or what is her outlandish name,
Violet?'

'Theresa; Sarah Theresa.'

'Well, really,' said John, 'it is not for the present company to
criticize outlandish names.'

'No,' said Arthur, 'it was a happy instinct that made us give my boy a
good rational working-day name, fit to go to school in, and no choice
either to give him the opportunity of gainsaying it, like Emma's friend,
and some others--Sir Percival that is to be! A hero of the Minerva
press!'

'No, indeed--if I was to be Sir Anything, which probably I never shall
be, I would hold, like my forefathers, to my good old Antony, which it
was not my doing to disregard.'

'Which earned him the title of Lumpkin, by which only he was known to
his schoolfellow!' said Arthur. 'If you ask after Fotheringham, they
invariably say, "Oh, you mean old Lumpkin!" So much for romantic names!'

'O