"I will give you a shilling each," says mother,"and you must make it do."
She takes out her purse that is so much too slender for the size of her family; and though we all scorn the scanty shilling that is to fall to our share, we do not say so. Shall we give one additional pang to that tender, gentle heart? The governor must have his hunting, his shooting, his horses. We must be kept so long without a sight of the Queen's countenance as almost to forget what she is like; and I am certain that when we are grown up we shall be spendthrifts. When mother has given us our shillings and kissed us all round, she goes away, and we also depart to make our toilets, and beautify ourselves according to our scanty means and several lights. Alice puts on a white hat with a long white feather, sole tail of an ostrich that the family possesses, and considered by us Adairs to be the ne plus ultra of beauty and fashion. Whatever our other shortcomings may be in the matter of dress, when that feather is in our midst, and Alice's blooming face is under that feather, we feel respectable, and defy anybody to beat us. She also wears a white cloak and a black silk dress, and when it is all put on, where will you, in the whole of England, find a fairer, sweeter sixteen-year-old, than our Alice? Milly wears her out-door gear as uncompromisingly as usual. Jack appears with a button-hole the size of a small cabbage, that gives him an uncommonly gay and festive air, and I, having tilted my Leghorn hat to the back of my head, for the better observation of men and matters, we descend and find Amberley awaiting us in a green bonnet, and with a large smut on her nose. We admire the former, but are all much too delicate to point out the latter to her, so it goes to the fair with the rest.
Pimpernel is only a mile away, but a noonday mile in June is a long one, and by the time we reach the High Street we are very hot indeed, and very thirsty. It is the second day of the fair, and
