Then, too, Euphemia Campanelle Brassey being in our room made it a little better; but, for all that, I was dull, and wretched, and miserable. You know, it was so tiresome in the old days with Patty; we did not want to be always drinking Spanish liquorice water, and eating sour apples, and cakes, and gooseberries in bed--it was so childish. It was all very well sometimes; but then Patty was so ravenous, thinking of nothing else but eating, and always wanting to have what she called a feast, and making the room smell horribly of peppermint--which, in its way, is really as bad as onions. But Effie Campanelle Brassey really was a nice girl, and sensible; and, of course, as we were allowed no suppers, it was nice to have a little in our bedrooms; so we had one box that we used to call the larder, and took it in turns to keep it replenished. Sometimes we used to have sausage rolls, sometimes pork pies, and little tartlets that there was an old woman in the town used to make so nicely. But our greatest difficulty used to be about something to drink; for though we could bring home a paper bag in one hand and a parasol in the other, of course we could not carry a bottle, and you may be sure that we did not care for Spanish liquorice water, nor yet for lemonade. I should have liked bottled stout, though I did take almost a dislike to it after Patty Smith proposed to give me a Seidlitz powder, for the effervescence put me in mind of it. But, as a rule, we used to have wine--sherry or claret--in a dear, nice, champagney-looking bottle, with a silvery top, and a blue heraldic dragon sitting in a castle, with his head out of the top and his tail sticking out of the bottom--a scaly-looking dragon, like Richard Coeur de Lion's legs in the old pictures; while the tail was all barbed like a crochet needle tied back to back to another crochet needle. And, oh, it was such fun! I believe those were the only merry times we had. The new servant always got the wine for us from a man in the town, and we used to lend her the key to put the bottle in the larder when she went up to make the beds; and I'm afraid to tell you how many bottles we drank, for it would be too shocking. Effie Campanelle Brassey was a really dear girl, and could enter into matters so much better than Patty Smith, and it was a pleasure to sit in the dusk of a night and tell her all about our disappointments--for, of course, they were disappointments, the poor Signor being found out, and Achille proving so utterly lost to all proper feeling, and acting as he did with Miss Furness. CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. MEMORY THE TWENTY-SECOND--WEAK WOMAN.