found ourselves immediately surrounded by three or four hundred people, who had taken Mrs. Hannaper’s horses from the carriage in which she and her niece were sitting, and insisted on drawing them home themselves, to testify their attachment to the cause which she patronizes. Mrs. Hannaper is apparently from sixty to sixty-five, with a face and form neither rough nor unpleasing; but a cloth habit, tight beaver hat, over a Brutus wig, a coloured silk handkerchief tied round her throat, and a collar rising almost to her cheek bones, gave so masculine an air as completely to deceive me, while the interposition of some drooping branches of an ash tree concealed the lower part of her dress from my view. She stood up in her barouchette, waved her hat to the multitude, huzzaed, and acted so like a man upon the occasion, that when I came near enough to see a petticoat, I blushed for the honour of my sex. Her niece held a parasol over her head, and seemed less inclined to make these outrageous demonstrations than her aunt; but she held a sort of banner in the left hand with Sir Christopher’s name worked in gold letters, and her hat was ornamented with a great cockade of his colours. The carriage stopped when we appeared, and Mrs. Hannaper covering her head sat down, and desiring Mr. Otway, whom she had previously seen, to present my brother, sister, and me, very politely requested us to breakfast on the following day, when she meant, as she told us, to turn out a bagged fox; and her “Liliputians”--the name by which she distinguished a favourite pack of some tiny breed, with the technical appellation of which I am unacquainted. “Come early,” added she, “Sir Christopher, and a few friends, will be at Parham, where I shall be happy to see you.” I was beginning to say why we could not accept her kind invitation, when, in the same moment, I read “do let us go” in Frederick’s eye, and a glance from Mr. Otway’s, in which was legibly written, “it is something _new_, do not refuse.” I suppose that I mismanaged my excuse, for Mrs. Hannaper, nothing daunted, replied, “oh really you _must_ come, I never take refusals.” Mr. Otway told her that _some_ of the party would certainly attend her; and the intoxicated _leaders_ becoming impatient of so long a parley, threw up a cloud of hats into the air, with a deafening uproar, and the ladies were whirled along to our no small contentment, for our steeds threatened, by the noise, to become ungovernable. When we had resumed our peaceful track, we interchanged, as you may believe, some remarks upon the extraordinary vision that had just crossed our path. Mr. Otway was excessively amused by Charlotte’s asking whether Mrs. Hannaper, and her niece, were _Blue-stockings_. “No, I dare say not,” answered our friend. “Why do _you_ suppose them to be so?” “Oh,” replied Charlotte, “I have no reason, further than that from the masculine air of these ladies, I conclude that they must be disliked extremely by the other sex,