f all that is
healing and sweet in fields and groves, and savoury in meats; it means
carefulness, and inventiveness, and watchfulness, and willingness, and
readiness of appliance; it means the economy of your great-grandmothers,
and the science of modern chemists; it means much tasting, and no
wasting; it means English thoroughness, and French art, and Arabian
hospitality; and it means, in fine, that you are to be perfectly and
always 'ladies'--'loaf-givers;' and, as you are to see, imperatively
that everybody has something pretty to put on,--so you are to see, yet
more imperatively, that everybody has something nice to eat.

(_Another pause, and long drawn breath._)

DORA (_slowly recovering herself_) _to_ EGYPT. We had better have let
him go to sleep, I think, after all!

L. You had better let the younger ones go to sleep now: for I haven't
half done.

ISABEL (_panic-struck_). Oh! please, please! just one quarter of an
hour.

L. No, Isabel; I cannot say what I've got to say, in a quarter of an
hour; and it is too hard for you, besides:--you would be lying awake,
and trying to make it out, half the night. That will never do.

ISABEL. Oh, please!

L. It would please me exceedingly, mousie: but there are times when we
must both be displeased; more's the pity. Lily may stay for half an
hour, if she likes.

LILY. I can't; because Isey never goes to sleep, if she is waiting for
me to come.

ISABEL. Oh, yes, Lily; I'll go to sleep to-night, I will, indeed.

LILY. Yes, it's very likely, Isey, with those fine round eyes! (_To_ L.)
You'll tell me something of what you've been saying, to-morrow, won't
you?

L. No, I won't, Lily. You must choose. It's only in Miss Edgeworth's
novels that one can do right, and have one's cake and sugar afterwards,
as well (not that I consider the dilemma, to-night, so grave).

(LILY, _sighing, takes_ ISABEL's _hand._)

Yes, Lily dear, it will be better, in the outcome of it, so, than if you
were to hear all the talks that ever were talked, and all the stories
that ever were told. Good night.

(_The door leading to the condemned cells of the Dormitory
closes on_ LILY, ISABEL, FLORRIE, _and other diminutive and
submissive victims._)

JESSIE (_after a pause_). Why, I thought you were so fond of Miss
Edgeworth!

L. So I am; and so you ought all to be. I can read her over and over
again, without ever tiring; there's no one whose every page is so full,
and