n
stand longer on one leg already than Lady Di. Then I have a
singing-master, and another who teaches me the harp, and another for the
piano-forte. And what little time I can spare from these _principal_
things, I give by odd minutes to ancient and modern history, and
geography, and astronomy, and grammar, and botany. Then I attend
lectures on chemistry, and experimental philosophy, for as I am not yet
come out, I have not much to do in the evenings; and mamma says there is
nothing in the world that money can pay for but what I shall learn. And
I run so delightfully fast from one thing to another that I am never
tired. What makes it so pleasant is, as soon as I am fairly set in with
one master, another arrives. I should hate to be long at the same thing.
But I sha'n't have a great while to work so hard, for as soon as I come
out, I shall give it all up, except music and dancing."

All this time Lucilla sat listening with a smile, behind the complacency
of which she tried to conceal her astonishment. Ph[oe]be, who had less
self-control, was on the very verge of a broad laugh. Sir John, who had
long lived in a soil where this species is indigenous, had been too long
accustomed to all its varieties to feel much astonishment at this
specimen, which, however, he sat contemplating with philosophical but
discriminating coolness.

For my own part, my mind was wholly absorbed in contrasting the coarse
manners of this voluble and intrepid, but good-humored girl, with the
quiet, cheerful, and unassuming elegance of Lucilla.

"I should be afraid, Miss Rattle," said Mr. Stanley, "if you did not
look in such blooming health, that, with all these incessant labors, you
did not allow yourself time for rest. Surely you never sleep?"

"O yes, that I do, and eat too," said she; "my life is not quite so hard
and moping as you fancy. What between shopping and morning visits with
mamma, and seeing sights, and the park, and the gardens (which, by the
way, I hate, except on a Sunday when they are crowded), and our young
balls, which are four or five in a week after Easter, and mamma's music
parties at home, I contrive to enjoy myself tolerably, though after I
have been presented, I shall be a thousand times better off, for then I
sha'n't have a moment to myself. Won't that be delightful?" said she,
twitching my arm rather roughly, by way of recalling my attention,
which, however, had seldom wandered.

As she had now run out her London mate