I'll tell them in tlie village how you kept Us all tipon the
pig, that (lied in a fit, for a week; and how you made the
beef-tea in the wanning-pnri, because you wouldn't pay for
the frying-pan to be mended; and how you kept the Uevon-
shire cream in your looking-glass drawer 'till it turned bad,
because you couldn't eat it yourself, and wouldn't give it
away; and then sent it to old Mrs. Raddles, wilh your love
— your love, indeed — that for your love!''

And here, Patience Stiles, who had been gradually working
herself up to the highest pitch of excitement — in spite of the
alarmed interjections of Lady Flokes. and the mild attempts of
Mr. Page to stop her — swept a bandbox full of tea-things off
the drawers, with her hand, and flounced out of the room,
banging the door to after her with a concussion that increased
the confusion, by shaking down a sixpenny black figure in
plaster, holding a candlestick, in which Lady Flokes burnt a
tiny beacon all night, constructed so as to give the smallest
possible speck of blue light that could exist without actual
and utter obscurity.
"There, Mr. Page!" said Lady Flokes, as soon as she
recovered herself, upon the maiden's angry departure,
"There! now, you see what I have had to put up with! It
has taken twenty years off my life."

This was to be regretted, apart from other considerations,
for the reason, that had the extra scope been allowed to run
its natural career. Lady Flokcs's age would have approaclied
the incredible.
