es beside a lady, talking to her, not
indifferently. The gentleman was her bridegroom and her babe. "I know
his back," said Mrs. Berry, as if she had branded a mark on it in
infancy. But the lady was not her bride. Mrs. Berry diverged from the
path, and got before them on the left flank; she stared, retreated, and
came round upon the right. There was that in the lady's face which Mrs.
Berry did not like. Her innermost question was, why he was not walking
with his own wife? She stopped in front of them. They broke, and passed
about her. The lady made a laughing remark to him, whereat he turned to
look, and Mrs. Berry bobbed. She had to bob a second time, and then he
remembered the worthy creature, and hailed her Penelope, shaking her
hand so that he put her in countenance again. Mrs. Berry was extremely
agitated. He dismissed her, promising to call upon her in the evening.
She heard the lady slip out something from a side of her lip, and they
both laughed as she toddled off to a sheltering tree to wipe a corner of
each eye. "I don't like the looks of that woman," she said, and repeated
it resolutely.

"Why doesn't he walk arm-in-arm with her?" was her neat inquiry.
"Where's his wife?" succeeded it. After many interrogations of the sort,
she arrived at naming the lady a bold-faced thing; adding subsequently,
brazen. The lady had apparently shown Mrs. Berry that she wished to get
rid of her, and had checked the outpouring of her emotions on the breast
of her babe. "I know a lady when I see one," said Mrs. Berry. "I haven't
lived with 'em for nothing; and if she's a lady bred and born, I wasn't
married in the church alive."

Then, if not a lady, what was she? Mrs. Berry desired to know: "She's
imitation lady, I'm sure she is!" Berry vowed. "I say she don't look
proper."

Establishing the lady to be a spurious article, however, what was one
to think of a married man in company with such? "Oh no! it ain't that!"
Mrs. Berry returned immediately on the charitable tack. "Belike it's
some one of his acquaintance 've married her for her looks, and he've
just met her.... Why it'd be as bad as my Berry!" the relinquished
spouse of Berry ejaculated, in horror at the idea of a second man being
so monstrous in wickedness. "Just coupled, too!" Mrs. Berry groaned on
the suspicious side of the debate. "And such a sweet young thing for his
wife! But no, I'll never believe it. Not if he tell me so himself! And
men don't do that," she whi