break the monotony of the
entertainment! But, no; there we sat, Aunt Horsingham remarking that
the "weather was dull" and the "crops looking very unpromising;" Aunt
Deborah with her eyes fixed on a portrait of the late Mr. David Jones
as a boy, opposite which she invariably took her place, and on which,
though representing an insignificant urchin in a high frill and blue
jacket, she gazed intently during the whole repast; Cousin Amelia
looking at herself in the silver dish-covers, and when those were
removed relapsing into a state of irritable torpor; and as for poor
me, all I could do was to think over the pleasures of the past season,
and dwell rather more than I should otherwise have done on the image
of Frank Lovell, and the very agreeable acquisition he would have been
to such a party. And then the evenings were, if possible, worse than
the dinners--work, work, work--mum, mum, mum--till tea. And after tea
Aunt Horsingham would read to us, in her dry harsh voice, long
passages from the _Spectator_, very excellent articles from the
_Rambler_, highly interesting in their day no doubt, but which lose
some of their point after an interval of nearly a century; or, worse
than all, Pope's "Homer" or Cowper's "Task," running the lines into
each other, so as to avoid what she called "the sing-song of the
rhymes," till the poet's effusions sounded like the most extraordinary
prose, cut into lengths, as we ladies should say, for no earthly
purpose but to make nonsense of the whole thing. Her ladyship never
went to bed till eleven; so there, having dined at half-past six to a
minute, we were forced to sit three mortal hours and a half,
swallowing yawns and repressing that inexplicable disorder termed the
"fidgets" till the welcome bed-candles arrived. No wonder men drink
and smoke and commit all sort of enormities to fill up those dreadful
hours after dinner. I think if ever I take to tobacco it will be at
Dangerfield.

Then of course the Hall was haunted; and of course _my_ passage was
the one which the ghost particularly affected. It was a sad story that
of "the Dangerfield ghost." I have got it all out of Aunt Deborah at
different times; and though I don't exactly believe in the spectre, I
can't help sometimes crying over the incidents. The fact is, the
Horsinghams were quite as proud of their ghost as they were of their
hand; and although not a very creditable tale to any of the family,
Aunt Deborah would never forgive me