h, that sends angry runlets down the gravel walks,
that muddies the gold goblets of the closed crocuses.

"And you without your walk!" says Barbara, lifting her face from her
stitching. "Poor Miss Nancy!"

"There is not enough blue sky to make a cat a pair of breeches!" cries
Bobby, despondently, and with his usual vulgarity.

Sometimes I am tempted to fear that Bobby is hopelessly
ungenteel--ungenteel for life. He has now taken possession of another
window, and is consulting the eastern sky.

"A ransomless king, and a trouserless cat! That is about the state of
the case!" say I, turning away from the window with a grin.

After all, now I come to think of it, I am nearly as vulgar as Bobby.
But I am right. Through the day, through the long, light, cold evening,
the posture of the weather changes not. To-day, Barbara, Algy, and I,
are all constrained to dine; for have not we a dinner-party, or rather a
mild simulation of one?--a squire or two, a squiress or two, a curate or
two--such odd-come-shorts as can be got together in a scattered country
neighborhood at briefest notice. Barbara and I, as it happens, are both
late. It is five minutes past eight, when with the minor details of our
toilets a good deal slurred, with a paucity of bracelets and lack of
necessary pins, we hurriedly and sneakingly enter the drawing-room, and
find all our guests already come together. Mother gives us an almost
imperceptible glance of gentle reproach, but father is so occupied in
bantering a strange miss--banter in which the gallant and the fatherly
happily join to make that manner which is the envy and admiration of the
neighborhood--that he seems unconscious of our entrance. An intuition,
however, tells us that this is not the case, but that he is making a
note of it. This depresses us so much that, until song and sherry have
comforted and emboldened us, we have not spirits to make any effort
toward the entertainment of our neighbors. We have been paired with a
couple of curates. Mine is a strong-handed, ingenuous Ishmael, who tells
everybody that he hates his trade, and that he thinks it is very hard
that he may not get out of it, now that his elder brother is dead. I am
thankful to say that his appetite is as vast as his shoulders; so, after
I have told him that I _love_ raw oysters, and that Barbara cannot sit
in the room with a roast hare; and have heard in return that he does not
care about brill, but worships John Dory, we slide