ou suffered shipwreck, captivity, and famine, if
half we hear be true."

"Report has a little magnified our risks; we encountered some serious
dangers, but nothing amounting to the sufferings you have mentioned."

"Being a married woman, and having passed the crisis in which
deception is not practised, I expect to hear truth again," said Mrs.
Bloomfield, smiling. "I trust, however, you underwent enough to
qualify you all for heroes and heroines, and shall content myself
with knowing that you are here, safe and happy--if," she added,
looking inquiringly at Eve, "one who has been educated abroad _can_
be happy at home."

"One educated abroad _may_ be happy at home, though possibly not in
the modes most practised by the world," said Eve firmly.

"Without an opera, without a court, almost without society!"

"An opera would be desirable, I confess; of courts I know nothing,
unmarried females being cyphers in Europe; and I hope better things
than to think I shall be without society."

"Unmarried females are considered cyphers too, here, provided there
be enough of them with a good respectable digit at their head. I
assure you no one quarrels with the cyphers under such circumstances.
I think, Sir George Templemore, a town like this must be something of
a paradox to you."

"Might I venture to inquire the reason for this opinion!"

"Merely because it is neither one thing nor another. Not a capital,
nor yet merely a provincial place; with something more than commerce
in its bosom, and yet with that something hidden under a bushel. A
good deal more than Liverpool, and a good deal less than London.
Better even than Edinburgh, in many respects, and worse than Wapping,
in others."

"You have been abroad, Mrs. Bloomfield?"

"Not a foot out of my own country; scarcely a foot out of my own
state. I have been at Lake George, the Falls, and the Mountain House;
and, as one does not travel in a balloon, I saw some of the
intermediate places. As for all else, I am obliged to go by report."

"It is a pity Mrs. Bloomfield was not with us, this evening, at Mrs.
Jarvis's," said Eve, laughing. "She might then have increased her
knowledge, by listening to a few cantos from the epic of Mr. Dodge."

"I have glanced at some of that author's wisdom," returned Mrs.
Bloomfield, "but I soon found it was learning backwards. There is a
never-failing rule, by which it is easy to arrive at a traveller's
worth, in a negative sense, at least."