"

"I scarce thought you would try, Hetty," the young man said. You see,
I'm not used to this kind of welcome in this house."

"What is it, my poor boy?" asks kind Mrs. Lambert, looking in at
the door at this juncture, and finding the youth with a very woeworn
countenance.

"Oh, we have heard the story before, mamma!" says Hetty, hurriedly.
"Harry is making his old complaint of having nothing to do. And he is
quite unhappy; and he is telling us so over and over again, that's all."

"So are you hungry over and over again, my dear! Is that a reason why
your papa and I should leave off giving you dinner?" cries mamma, with
some emotion. "Will you stay and have ours, Harry? 'Tis just three
o'clock!" Harry agreed to stay, after a few faint negations. "My husband
dines abroad. We are but three women, so you will have a dull dinner,"
remarks Mrs. Lambert.

"We shall have a gentleman to enliven us, mamma, I dare say!" says Madam
Pert, and then looked in mamma's face with that admirable gaze of
blank innocence which Madam Pert knows how to assume when she has been
specially and successfully wicked.

When the dinner appeared. Miss Hetty came downstairs, and was
exceedingly chatty, lively, and entertaining. Theo did not know that any
little difference had occurred (such, alas, my Christian friends,
will happen in the most charming families), did not know, I say, that
anything had happened until Hetty's uncommon sprightliness and
gaiety roused her suspicions. Hetty would start a dozen subjects of
conversation--the King of Prussia, and the news from America; the last
masquerade, and the highwayman shot near Barnet; and when her sister,
admiring this volubility, inquired the reason of it, with her eyes,--

"Oh, my dear, you need not nod and wink at me!" cries Hetty. "Mamma
asked Harry on purpose to enliven us, and I am talking until he begins,
just like the fiddles at the playhouse, you know, Theo! First the
fiddles. Then the play. Pray begin, Harry!"

"Hester!" cries mamma.

"I merely asked Harry to entertain us. You said yourself, mother, that
we were only three women, and the dinner would be dull for a gentleman;
unless, indeed, he chose to be very lively."

"I'm not that on most days--and, Heaven knows, on this day less than
most," says poor Harry.

"Why on this day less than another? Tuesday is as good a day to be
lively as Wednesday. The only day when we mustn't be lively is Sunday.
Well, you know it is, ma'am! We