say--

"Strong stuff, Squire--eh? The Major should look to his head with it,
after his morning tankard: but for coffee-drinkers like you and me I
reckon there's no danger."

Kitty gave a little gasp, all to herself. "Do you take coffee with your
breakfast, my Lord?" she asked--and declared to her last day it seemed
like another person speaking, her voice sounded so faint and unnatural.

"Ha-bitually," says Lord William, and begins discoursing on the
coffee-bean, and how it cleared the brain.

Kitty couldn't look at him steady, but was forced to glance away and out
of window. The tears and the fun were rising together within her like a
spring tide. Lord William thought that her mind was running on the clock,
and she wished to be rid of them. So the bowing and compliments began
again, and inside of ten minutes the visitors had made their congees and
were out in the street. The door was scarcely shut upon them when Kitty
sank down all of a heap in her armchair and began to rock herself to and
fro.

"Oh, oh, oh!" she began; and her daughters truly thought at first 'twas
hysterics. "I'll give it forty minutes," she said. "Maria, if 'twasn't so
near upon church-time, I'd ask you to loosen my stays. White Ale upon
coffee! Oh, oh, oh!" And with that she started up. "Forty minutes!
What it'll do in forty minutes no earthly power can tell. But get ready,
girls, and follow close till I'm safe in church."

So forth she sailed, and her eight daughters behind her, down the street,
in by the churchyard gate, and up through the crowd to the porch with her
face set like the calm of Doomsday.

IV.

Well, the congregation settled itself, and service began, and not a sign--
as why should there be?--of any feelings but holy devotion. The Whigs
looked at their books, and the Tories looked at their books; and poor
old Curate Grandison lost his place and his spectacles, and poor old
Parson Polsue dropped asleep in the First Lesson. He'd neglected two
parishes to come and preach the sermon: for Ardevora, you must know, was
one of three livings he held besides a canonry, and he kept Grandison to
serve the three, that being all he could afford after paying for his
carriage-and-pair and postillions to carry him back and forth between us
and Penzance, where he lodged for the sake of his asthma and the little
card-parties for which Penzance was famous in those days. But not even an
Election Sunday could keep him properl