before their eyes for them to feel the mournfulness and pity of it in their hearts. If only I had hearkened to George's words that day when he stood under the trees and entreated me not to go away, or, if I went, to bind myself by a promise, there would be two miserable people less on God's earth to-night.
"Supper is ready!" cries Basan, bursting wildly in an hour later; and I lift my head from the window sill, and smooth my hair, and go down to a meal that fills me with a blank sense of amazement, it is so constrained, so unnatural. The sociable freedom of the Luttrell table, and to which I have grown accustomed, opened my eyes to the wretched discomforts here: the few and forced words, the abuse of the servants, the perpetual looking out for imaginary faults in dishes and attendance, the unmannerly manners. Towards the end of supper a slight contre-temps occurs, for Basan, being ordered in a voice of thunder to ring the bell, starts up, poor willing youth, with extraordinary celerity and not spying a large silver dish-cover lying near him, plants a well-directed kick in the centre of its hollow body, which sends it flying across the room into the fire-place, where it lodges amid a crash of falling irons.
"Dolt! booby! fool!" yells papa, bounding in his chair; and Basan returns to the table covered with shame and confusion.
I wonder if papa will pay some family in Australia so much a week for permission to call them names? It would be hard upon him to have all his little comforts cut off at once. Supper over, poor Basan goes to bed (I wish I might), mother works, papa smokes his pipe, and I make spills, a suitable and becoming occupation for a young woman in his estimation, but one that I never excelled at, for laboriously as I roll and roll at them, they never have nice taper points or strong backs. Jack's are as stiff as pokers. How I hate these silent dreadful after-supper hours. How Alice and Milly hated them in their turn! How the young
