As the clock was striking one that day, they sat down to lunch: Miss Upton, who had just arrived, Mr. Grubb, and Lady Adela. Miss Upton never took the meal later if she could help it. Indeed, at home she took it at twelve. Her breakfast hour was eight precisely, and by twelve she was ready for luncheon. Lady Acorn came in as they were sitting down, threw her bonnet on a chair, and sat down with them. Hearing that Miss Upton would be there, she had come, uninvited, to meet her. "How early you went out, mamma!" cried Adela, in rather an aggrieved tone. For, when she reached Chenevix House that morning, she found her mother and sisters had already left it: so that she had heard no particulars at all about Lady Mary's proposed wedding, not even whether there was certainly to be one, and Adela had her curiosity upon the subject. "We went shopping," answered Lady Acorn. "One likes to do that before the heat of the day comes on. Do you know that Mr. Cleveland is going to marry again, Margery?" she added abruptly, looking across the table at Miss Upton. "Yes, I know it. He came to the Court yesterday morning to tell me of it. I think Mary will make him a good wife." "She has courage," said Mr. Grubb, with a pleasant laugh. "How many children are there? Ten?" "No. Eight. And they are of all ages; from seven, up to four-and-twenty," added Miss Upton. Lady Acorn was nodding her head, in emphatic acquiescence to Mr. Grubb's remark. "I told Mary she had the courage of Job, when the thing first came to my ears. Eight children and a poor country Rector! Young women are ready to marry a broomstick when they get to Mary's age, if the chance falls in their way." "Had Job so much courage, mamma?" put in Adela. "Courage or patience, or some such virtue. It is not I that would have taken an old widower with a flock of young ones," continued the countess, in her plain-speaking tartness. "You will get rid of us all in time, mamma," observed Adela. "It entails trouble enough," was her mother's ungracious rejoinder. "I am quite done over with heat and fatigue now--going about from one place to another after Mary's things. Gowns and bonnets and slips and mantles, and all the rest of it! Girls are so exacting when they are going to marry: they must have this, and they must have that, and Mary is no exception to the rule. One would think she had picked up a duke." "It is natural they should be," observed Miss Upton. "But it's not the less ridiculous," retorted the countess. "One thing I must say--that Tom Cleveland is showing himself in desperate haste to take another wife." "The haste is for his children's sake," said Miss Upton; "be very sure of that, Betsy. 'I must have some one to control and train them; since my poor wife's death the girls have run wild,' he said to me yesterday, when he told me about Mary, and the tears were almost running down his cheeks." "It is a great charge," spoke Mr. Grubb. "I mean for Lady Mary."