cussing a third tartlet; "but there must be great allowance for your
want of skill; and you ought to esteem yourself fortunate (I'll take
another jelly) that there is to be no banquet; for--though it is evil to
give one's mind to fleshly tastes or creature comforts--these things
would hardly be deemed fit for a second-table wedding at Whitehall!"

Solomon was deeply mortified. He had great veneration for court, but he
had greater for his own talent, and he loved not to hear it called in
question: he therefore scanned the waiting-maid after his peculiar mode,
and then drawing himself up, stroked his chin, and replied, "That great
men had sat at his master's table, and had, he was well assured, praised
his skill in words which could not be repeated--that Lady Frances
herself had condescended to ask his method of blanching almonds, and
lauded his white chicken soup; and that he should not dread being
commanded to serve a banquet unto the Lord Protector himself."

Mistress Maud sneered, and examined a third jelly, which she was
reluctantly compelled to quit by a summons from her lady.

"What robe would your ladyship desire?" she inquired of Lady Frances,
whose eyes were red with weeping, and who appeared astonishingly
careless upon a point that usually occupied much of her attention.
"Would your ladyship like the white and silver, with the pearl loopings
and diamond stomacher?"

"What need to trouble me as to the robe?" at length she replied with an
irritability of manner to which she too often yielded. "Why do I
entertain two lazy hussies, but to see after my robings, and save me the
trouble of thinking thereon?--Go to!--you have no brain."

Maud and her assistant laid out the dress and the jewels, yet Lady
Frances was ill satisfied.

"Said I not that the stomacher needed lengthening?--The point is not a
point, but a round!--Saw one ever the like?--It is as square as a dove's
tail, instead of tapering off like a parroquet's!"

"Did your ladyship mean," said the elder of the bewildered girls, "that
the stomacher was square or round?"

She perfectly agreed with her mistress in thinking a stomacher a matter
of great importance, but was most sadly perplexed that Lady Frances
should so markedly object to that which she had so warmly praised on a
former occasion.

"Square or round!" repeated Lady Frances impetuously--"neither:--it is
to be peaked--thus!"

The poor maid, in her eagerness to hold the stomacher for her l