t is to you I owe duty and obedience--not to him. Pray keep my
secret, kindest and most indulgent of mothers, and--and ask Valentine
to come and see you now and then."

"Ask him to come and see me, Charlotte! You must know very well that I
never invite any one to dinner except at Mr. Sheldon's wish. I am sure
I quite tremble at the idea of a dinner. There is such trouble about
the waiting, and such dreadful uncertainty about the cooking. And if
one has it all done by Birch's people, one's cook gives warning next
morning," added poor Georgy, with a dismal recollection of recent
perplexities. "I am sure I often wish myself young again, in the dairy
at Hyley farm, making matrimony cakes for a tea-party, with a ring and
a fourpenny-piece hidden in the middle. I'm sure the Hyley tea-parties
were pleasanter than Mr. Sheldon's dinners, with those solemn City
people, who can't exist without clear turtle and red mullet."

"Ah, mother dear, our lives were altogether happier in those days. I
delight in the Yorkshire tea-parties, and the matrimony cakes, and all
the talk and laughter about the fourpenny-piece and the ring. I
remember getting the fourpenny-piece at Newhall last year. And that
means that one is to die an old maid, you know. And now I am engaged.
As to the dinners, mamma, Mr. Sheldon may keep them all for himself and
his City friends. Valentine is the last person in the world to care for
clear turtle. If you will let him drop in sometimes of an
afternoon--say once a week or so--when you, and I, and Diana are
sitting at our work in the drawing-room, and if you will let him hand
us our cups at our five-o'clock tea, he will be the happiest of men. He
adores tea. You'll let him come, won't you, dear? O, mamma, I feel just
like a servant who asks to be allowed to see her 'young man.' Will you
let my 'young man' come to tea once in a way?"

"Well, Charlotte, I'm sure I don't know," said Mrs. Sheldon, with
increasing helplessness. "It's really a very dreadful position for me
to be placed in."

"Quite appalling, is it not, mamma? But then I suppose it is a position
that people afflicted with daughters must come to sooner or later."

"If it were the mere civility of asking him to tea," pursued poor
Georgy, heedless of this flippant interruption, "I'm sure I should be
the last to make any objection. Indeed, I am under a kind of obligation
to Mr. Hawkehurst, for his polite attention has enabled us to go to the
theatres very