All they wanted was to be able to _say_ they had seen the Exhibition. Mrs. Cursty did not hesitate to confess, that after all she had suffered, she did not, for her part, care whether she saw it or not. All she desired was just to put her nose inside the door, so as not to be obliged to go back and acknowledge that, though they had come up to town for the express purpose of witnessing the Great Exhibition, and paying goodness knows what for season tickets and “new things” they had been “stupids enough” to go back without having had a glimpse at a single article in the Crystal Palace after all. No, that would never do. The accounts which they read in the papers, moreover, served to make them still more anxious to see what all appeared to consider the great wonder of the age. Besides, Cursty himself began to perceive that the Great Exhibition was not the mere gewgaw show that he had anticipated, and the more he read about it, the more desirous he felt to make himself acquainted with its various details. Mrs. Cursty, too, after a little while, became, in her turn, eager to see the “Mountain of Light” in its gilt cage,—and the Queen of Spain’s jewels,—and the French tapestry, and the stomacher of brilliants that she had heard so much about—and the carpet worked by one hundred and fifty ladies as a present to the Queen—and the beautiful state-bed—and the poplin loom, which could make the poplin a quarter of a yard wider than usual, which, in her opinion, was one of the greatest improvements in the whole place;—and then there was that love of a glass fountain which she should not rest easy in her bed, she knew, if she went back to Cumberland without seeing,—and, better still, that delicious fountain of “_Aqua d’Oro_,” which the ladies were at liberty to dip their handkerchiefs in as much and as often as they pleased.