ntellectual crown, and put her through every stage of
her own particular recipes for cream cheese and pickled walnuts.

"The dickons!" cried a Somerset yeoman: "The Lon'on madam has opened the
five-barred gate that beat all the other women's fingers, and gathered
the finest elder-flowers, and caught the fattest chicken; and they tell
me she has repeated verses to poor crazed Isaac, till she has lulled him
into a fine sleep. 'Well done, Lon'on!' cries I; 'luck to the fine
lady:' I never thought to wish success to such a kind." Granny, too,
cried, "Well done, Lon'on! Luck to the fine lady!" If all Helens were
but as pure, and true, and tender as Lady Betty!

Granny would have Lady Betty shown about among the neighbours, and
maintained triumphantly that she read them, Sedleys, Ashbridges, and
Harringtons, as if they were characters in a printed book--not that she
looked down on them, or disparaged them in any way; she was far more
tolerant than rash, inexperienced Prissy and Fiddy. And Granny ordered
Lady Betty to be carried sight-seeing to Larks' Hall, and made minute
arrangements for her to inspect Granny's old domain, from garret to
cellar, from the lofty usher-tree at the gate to the lowly

"Plaintain ribbed that heals the reapers' wound"

in the herb-bed. No cursory inspection would suffice her: the
pragmatical housekeeper and the rosy milkmaids had time to give up their
hearts to Lady Betty like the rest. Master Rowland, as in courtesy
bound, limped with the stranger over his helmets and gauntlets, his
wooden carvings, his black-letter distich; and, although she was not
overflowing in her praises, she had seen other family pictures by
Greuze, and she herself possessed a fan painted by Watteau, to which he
was vastly welcome if he cared for such a broken toy.

She fancied the head of one of the Roman emperors to be like his Grace
of Montague; she had a very lively though garbled familiarity with the
histories of the veritable Brutus and Cassius, Coriolanus, Cato,
Alexander, and other mighty, picturesque, cobbled-up ancients, into
whose mouths she could put appropriate speeches; and she accepted a
loan of his 'Plutarch's Lives,' "to clear up her classics," as she said
merrily; altogether poor Squire Rowland felt that he had feasted at an
intellectual banquet.

At last it was time to think of redeeming her pledge to cousin Ward;
and, to Mistress Betty's honour, the period came while Master Rowland
was still to