and I'll choose you a lovely plant. It's too bad to
see all the dear verbenas bitten by the frost." She tossed a rose into Miss
Lydia's hands, and went back gladly into the garden.

A fortnight after this the Major came over and besought her to return with
him for a week at Chericoke. Mrs. Lightfoot had taken to her bed, he said
sadly, and the whole place was rapidly falling to rack and ruin. "We need
your hands to put it straight again," he added, "and Molly told me on no
account to come back without you. I am at your mercy, my dear."

"Why, I should love to go," replied Betty, with the thought of Dan at her
heart. "I'll be ready in a minute," and she ran upstairs to find her
mother, and to pack her things.

The Major waited for her standing; and when she came down, followed by
Petunia with her clothes, he helped her, with elaborate courtesy, into the
old coach before the portico.

"It takes me back to my wedding day, Betty," he said, as he stepped in
after her and slammed the door. "It isn't often that I carry off a pretty
girl so easily."

"Now I know that you didn't carry off Mrs. Lightfoot easily," returned
Betty, laughing from sheer lightness of spirits. "She has told me the whole
story, sir, from the evening that she wore the peach-blow brocade, that
made you fall in love with her on the spot, to the day that she almost
broke down at the altar. You had a narrow escape from bachelorship, sir, so
you needn't boast."

The Major chuckled in his corner. "I don't doubt that Molly told you so,"
he replied, "but, between you and me, I don't believe it ever occurred to
her until forty years afterwards. She got it out of one of those silly
romances she reads in bed--and, take my word for it, you'll find it
somewhere in the pages of her Mrs. Radcliffe, or her Miss Burney. Molly's a
sensible woman, my child,--I'm the last man to deny it--but she always did
read trash. You won't believe me, I dare say, but she actually tried to
faint when I kissed her in the carriage after her wedding--and, bless my
soul, I came to find that she had 'Evelina' tucked away under her cape."

"Why, she is the most sensible woman in the world," said Betty, "and I'm
quite sure that she was only fitting herself to your ideas, sir. No, you
can't make me believe it of Mrs. Lightfoot."

"My ideas never took the shape of an Evelina," dissented the Major, warmly,
"but it's a dangerous taste, my dear, the taste for trash. I've always said
that it