“It’s that nasty Brougham!” she said. “Alderman Daniel told me that he was stirring up the devil; and we’re going to get the dust. But la, bless your ladyship,” she continued comfortably, “I know the Bristol lads, and they’ll not hurt us. Just a gaol or two, for the sake of the frolic. My dear, your mother’ll have her tea, and will feel the better for it. And we’ll draw the curtains and light the lamps and take no heed. Maybe there’ll be bones broken, but they’ll not be ours!” Lady Sybil, with her face turned away, muttered something about Paris. “Well, your ladyship knows Paris and I don’t,” the schoolmistress replied respectfully. “I can fancy anything there. But you may depend upon it, my lady, England is different. I know old Alderman Daniel calls Lord John Russell ‘Lord John Robespierre,’ and says he’s worse than a Jacobin. But I’ll never believe he’d cut the King’s head off! Never! And don’t you believe it, either, my lady. No, English are English! There’s none like them, and never will be. All the same,” she concluded, “I shall set ‘Honour the King!’ for a copy when the young ladies come back.” Her views might not have convinced by themselves. But taken with tea and buttered toast, a good fire and a singing kettle, they availed. Lady Sybil was a shade easier that afternoon; and, naturally of a high courage, found a certain alleviation in the exciting doings under her windows. She was gracious to Miss Sibson, whose outpourings she received with languid amusement; and when Mary was not looking, she followed her daughter’s movements with mournful eyes. Uncertain as the wind, she was this evening in her best mood; as patient as she could be fractious, and as gentle as she was sometimes violent. She scouted the notion of danger with all Miss Sibson’s decision; and after tea she insisted that the lights should be shaded, and her couch be wheeled to the window, in order that, propped high with pillows, she might amuse herself with the hurly-burly in the Square below. “To be sure,” Miss Sibson commented, “it will do no good to anyone, this; and many a poor chap will suffer for it by and by. That’s the worst of these Broughams and Besoms, my lady. It’s the low down that swallow the dust. It’s very fine to cry ‘King and Reform!’ and drink the Corporation wine! But it will be ‘Between our sovereign lord the King and the prisoner at the bar!’ one of these days! And their throats will be dry enough then!” “Poor misguided people!” Mary murmured. “They’ve all learned the Church Catechism,” the schoolmistress replied shrewdly. “Or they should have; it’s lucky for them—ay, you may shout, my lads—that there’s many a slip between the neck and the rope—Lord ha’ mercy!” The last words fitted the context well enough; but they fell so abruptly from her lips that Mary, who was bending over her mother, looked up in alarm. “What is it?” she asked.