the
housekeeper at Larks' Hall, dreamt of subjecting to the wholesome
medicine of contradiction--unless it might be Granny, when she came in
with her staff in her hand. She would laugh at their excess of care, and
order them to leave off spoiling that child; but even Granny herself
would let fall a tear from her dim eyes when she read the register of
the child's age in the family Bible.

"Ah!" sighs whimsical little Mistress Fiddy, "if only Lady Betty were
here--great, good, kind, clever, funny, beautiful Lady Betty--who cured
me that night at Bath, papa and mamma, I would be well again. She knows
the complaint; she has had it herself; and her face is so cheering, her
wit so enlivening, and she reads the lessons so solemnly and sweetly. O
mamma! send for Mistress Betty; she will come at once; she does not play
now; the prints say so. She will be the better of the country air too.
Send for Mistress Betty to Mosely."

Madam was in a difficulty. An actress at the vicarage! And Master
Rowland had been so rash. He had dropped hints, which, along with his
hurried visit to London, had instilled dim, dark suspicions into the
minds of his appalled relations of the whirlpool he had just coasted,
they knew not how: they could not believe the only plain palpable
solution of the fact. And Granny had inveighed against women of fashion
and all public characters, ever since Uncle Rowland took that jaunt to
town, whence he returned so glum and dogged. But then, again, how could
the mother deny her ailing Fiddy? And this brilliant Mistress Betty
from the gay world might possess some talisman unguessed by the quiet
folks at home. Little Fiddy had no real disease, no settled pain: she
only wanted change, pleasant company, and diversion, and would be plump
and strong again in no time. And Mistress Betty had retired from the
stage now; she was no longer a marked person: she might pass anywhere as
Mistress Lumley, who had acted with success and celebrity, and withdrawn
at the proper moment, with the greatest dignity and discretion. And
Master Rowland was arranging his affairs to make the grand tour in the
prime of life: his absence would clear away a monstrous objection. What
would the Vicar say? What would Granny say?

The Vicar ruled his parish, and lectured in the church; but in the
parsonage he thought very much as madam did, and was only posed when old
madam and young madam pulled him different ways.

And Granny! Why, to madam's won