of it, if you have to put it in your
pocket. It's made by a recipe as I got from my great-aunt as lived up in
Berwick, and a light hand she had, too, for a cake," laying a generous
slice upon Isobel's plate, and seeming quite hurt by her refusal.

"You mustn't make her ill, Mrs. Binks," laughed Mrs. Stewart, "though
she fully appreciates your kindness.--Isobel, would you like to open the
parcel we brought with us?"

"You worked this for us, honey? Well, I never did!" cried Mrs. Binks,
touching the gorgeous tea-cosy gingerly, as if she feared her stout
fingers might soil its beauty.--"Peter, come hither and look at
this.--Use it for tea every day? Nay! that would be a sin and a shame.
It's a sight too pretty to use. I'll put it in the parlour, alongside of
the cup Binks won at last show for the black heifer. You shall see for
yourself, missy, how nice it'll stand on the sideboard, on top of a
daisy mat as Harriet crocheted when she was down with a bad leg."

Mrs. Binks opened a door at the farther side of the kitchen, and proudly
led the way into her best sitting-room. It was a close little room, with
a mouldy smell as if the chimney were stopped up and the window never
opened. One end of it was entirely filled by a glass-backed mahogany
sideboard; a large gilt mirror hung over the fireplace, carefully
swathed in white muslin to keep off the flies; the walls were adorned
with photographs of the Binks family and its many ramifications, taken
in their best clothes, which did not appear to sit easily upon them, to
judge by the stiff unrest of their attitudes; and opposite the door hung
a wonderful German oleograph depicting a scene that might either have
been a sunrise on the Alps or an eruption of Vesuvius, according to the
individual fancy of the spectator. The square table was covered with a
magenta cloth, in the centre of which stood a glass shade containing wax
fruit, while several gorgeously bound volumes of poems and sermons were
placed at regular intervals each upon a separate green wool-work mat.

It was so hot and airless in there that Isobel was quite glad when Mr.
Binks suggested they should adjourn to the garden, that he might show
her the figureheads which stood among the flower-beds like a row of
wooden statues. Each one was the record of some good ship gone to pieces
upon that treacherous coast, and as he walked along pointing them out
with his stick, the old man gave the histories of the wrecks, at many