ncert to-night, and a ball to-morrow, and a play the day
after. Oh," cried Magdalen, dropping into a chair and crossing her hands
rapturously on the table, "how I do like pleasure!"

"Come! that's explicit at any rate," said Miss Garth. "I think Pope must
have had you in his mind when he wrote his famous lines:

"'Men some to business, some to pleasure take, But every woman is at
heart a rake.'"

"The deuce she is!" cried Mr. Vanstone, entering the room while Miss
Garth was making her quotation, with the dogs at his heels. "Well;
live and learn. If you're all rakes, Miss Garth, the sexes are turned
topsy-turvy with a vengeance; and the men will have nothing left for
it but to stop at home and darn the stockings.--Let's have some
breakfast."

"How-d'ye-do, papa?" said Magdalen, taking Mr. Vanstone as boisterously
round the neck as if he belonged to some larger order of Newfoundland
dog, and was made to be romped with at his daughter's convenience. "I'm
the rake Miss Garth means; and I want to go to another concert--or a
play, if you like--or a ball, if you prefer it--or anything else in the
way of amusement that puts me into a new dress, and plunges me into a
crowd of people, and illuminates me with plenty of light, and sets me in
a tingle of excitement all over, from head to foot. Anything will do, as
long as it doesn't send us to bed at eleven o'clock."

Mr. Vanstone sat down composedly under his daughter's flow of language,
like a man who was well used to verbal inundation from that quarter. "If
I am to be allowed my choice of amusements next time," said the worthy
gentleman, "I think a play will suit me better than a concert. The girls
enjoyed themselves amazingly, my dear," he continued, addressing his
wife. "More than I did, I must say. It was altogether above my mark.
They played one piece of music which lasted forty minutes. It stopped
three times, by-the-way; and we all thought it was done each time, and
clapped our hands, rejoiced to be rid of it. But on it went again, to
our great surprise and mortification, till we gave it up in despair, and
all wished ourselves at Jericho. Norah, my dear! when we had crash-bang
for forty minutes, with three stoppages by-the-way, what did they call
it?"

"A symphony, papa," replied Norah.

"Yes, you darling old Goth, a symphony by the great Beethoven!" added
Magdalen. "How can you say you were not amused? Have you forgotten the
yellow-looking foreign woman, with the u