"the last were so stringy and thin that she said she dared not, the governor would call on the poultry woman, and it would all come out."
"If he only knew," says Milly, "that after feeding their bodies in life he had to pay for their carcases in death, how comforting it would be to his feelings! and every morning, regularly, he says their heads shall be cut off before night."
"And they deserve it," says Jack with unusual viciousness, "for of all the ill-behaved brutes I ever came across, they are the worst. They never lay eggs, or grow fat, or do any of the things all other well-regulated fowls are supposed to do."
"Mr. and Mrs. Skipworth are coming to dinner," says Alice, 'to their quarterly festival, you know, and, thank goodness, we shall not be expected to talk. I wonder," she adds, with the gay laugh that never degenerates into a bellow like Jack's, or a cackle like mine, "whether she will wear her purple satin gown?"
"I hope so," says Jack unkindly; "for sooner or later I am certain that she will blow up in it, as Betsy Binn did, and sit calm and smiling in the midst of the purple ruins. Why should not the event take place to-day, indeed?"
Ding-dong! ding-dong! goes a squeaky little bell hard by, it is the voice of Silverbridge church, summoning its flock to worship. We are so near the churchyard that from our windows we can throw a pebble at the railings that close in the vault of our ancestors, by whose side we must all lie some day (if there is room), every one. There are so many of us though, that some will have to lie in state, and some simply, as poor folks do; those who go first will have the best place, those who go last the lower one. We do not pause to put away our books, but set off down the long passage and up the stairs and down more steps and up others, for the Manor House is built with the especial purpose of breaking the necks, legs, and arms of the inhabitants thereof, and
