om the Pump-room, the music, and the
cards, to which they were bound. They asked her address, and pressed
her to pay them a visit; when they would have certainly adopted her,
and bequeathed to her their plum. As it was, half-a-dozen years later,
when, to her remorse, she had clean forgotten their existence, they
astounded her by leaving her a handsome legacy; which, with the
consent of another party concerned--one who greatly relished the mere
name of the bequest, as a proof that nobody could ever resist Lady
Betty--she shared with a cross-grained grand-nephew whom the
autocratic pair had cut off with a shilling.

VI.--BETWEEN MOSELY AND LARKS' HALL.

At Mosely Mistress Betty alighted at last, entered the wicket-gate, and
approached the small, weather-stained, brick house. She made her curtsy
to madam, asked the Vicar's blessing--though he was not twenty-five
years her senior and scarcely so wise--hugged the little girls,
particularly sick Fiddy, and showered upon them pretty tasteful town
treasures, which little country girls, sick or well, dearly love.
Fiddy's eyes were glancing already; but she did not leave off holding
Mistress Betty's hand in order to try on her mittens, or to turn the
handle of the musical box. And Mistress Betty finally learned, with some
panic and palpitation, which she was far too sensible and stately a
woman to betray, that the Justice was not gone--that Master Rowland, in
place of examining the newly-excavated Italian cities, or dabbling in
state treason in France, was no further off than Larks' Hall, confined
there with a sprained ankle: nobody being to blame, unless it were
Granny, who had detained Master Rowland to the last moment, or Uncle
Rowland himself, for riding his horse too near the edge of the sandpit,
and endangering his neck as well as his shin-bones. However, Mistress
Betty did not cry out that she had been deceived, or screech
distractedly, or swoon desperately (though the last was in her
constitution), neither did she seem to be brokenhearted by the accident.

But Granny's reception of her was the great event of the day. Granny was
a picture, in her grey gown and "clean white hood nicely plaited,"
seated in her wicker seat "fronting the south, and commanding the
washing-green." Here Granny was amusing herself picking
gooseberries--which the notable Prissy was to convert into
gooseberry-fool, one of the dishes projected to grace the town lady's
supper--when Mistress Betty