her admiring knight attendant everywhere:
Edwin brought her to see his pigeons; Walter, with sweet, shy blushes,
offered her "a 'ittle f'ower!" and the three, as the greatest of all
favours, insisted on escorting her to pay a visit to the beautiful calf
not a week old.

Laughing, she followed the boys; telling them how lately in Sicily she
had been presented to a week-old prince, son of Louis Philippe the
young Duke of Orleans and the Princess Marie-Amelie. "And truly,
children, he was not half so pretty as your little calf. Ursula, I am
sick of courts sometimes. I would turn shepherdess myself, if we could
find a tolerable Arcadia."

"Is there any Arcadia like home?"

"Home!"--Her face expressed the utmost loathing, fear, and scorn. I
remembered hearing that the 'Squire since his return from abroad had
grown just like his father; was drunk every day and all day long. "Is
your husband altered, Ursula? He must be quite a young man still. Oh,
what it is to be young!"

"John looks much older, people say; but I don't see it."

"Arcadia again! Can such things be? especially in England, that
paradise of husbands, where the first husband in the realm sets such an
illustrious example. How do you stay-at-home British matrons feel
towards my friend the Princess of Wales?"

"God help her, and make her as good a woman as she is a wronged and
miserable wife," said Ursula, sadly.

"Query, Can a 'good woman' be made out of a 'wronged and miserable
wife'? If so, Mrs. Halifax, you should certainly take out a patent for
the manufacture."

The subject touched too near home. Ursula wisely avoided it, by
inquiring if Lady Caroline meant to remain in England.

"Cela depend." She turned suddenly grave. "Your fresh air makes me
feel weary. Shall we go in-doors?"

Dinner was ready laid out--a plain meal; since neither the father nor
any of us cared for table dainties; but I think if we had lived in a
hut, and fed off wooden platters on potatoes and salt, our repast would
have been fair and orderly, and our hut the neatest that a hut could
be. For the mother of the family had in perfection almost the best
genius a woman can have--the genius of tidiness.

We were not in the least ashamed of our simple dinner-table, where no
difference was ever made for anybody. We had little plate, but plenty
of snow-white napery and pretty china; and what with the scents of the
flower-garden on one side, and the green waving of the