only had fruits, and no dishes probably but leaves, that you could throw away afterwards, which was _very_ different from nice china, I can assure you, for you may not know, not being a house-keeper, that as regards china _nowadays_--our old blue sets--our servants are not in the _least_ careful not to nick; I don't enter here into the great question of emancipation for the slaves, _but_--nick they _will_! Mistress Thorne speaks like 'Paradise Lost' to this day, and, what is more, she has taught Garda to speak in the same way--just like a book; only Garda's book is her own, you never know what she is going to say next, she turns about in all sorts of shapes, like those kaleidoscopes they used to give us children when I was little, only _she_ never rattles (they did, dreadfully)--for I am sure a softer voice _I_ never heard, unless it was that of the Old Madam, who used to say in velvet tones the most ferocious things you ever heard. Ah, you should have seen her!--straight as an arrow, and they said she was ninety for over thirty years, which of course was impossible, even if she had wished it, which I doubt, for there is the well-known Bible age of threescore years and ten, and to have exceeded it to _that_ extent would have been irreverent. She was poor Eddie Thorne's aunt, the sister of his mother, a Duero and a tremendous one, dyed in ancestors to the core; every one was afraid of her but Garda, and Garda she took complete charge of as long as she lived, though Mistress Thorne did what she could on the outskirts--_not_ much, I fancy, for the Old Madam declared that the child was a true Duero and should be brought up as one, which seemed to mean principally that she should swing in the hammock, and not learn verbs. I _think_ Mistress Thorne began to teach Garda verbs the day after the funeral; at least when I went down there to pay a visit of condolence I found her with a grammar in her hand, and a good deal of cheerfulness under the circumstances--a good deal! The first Edgar Thorne, the one who came out from England, is said to have been a man of a good deal of force of character, for he kept a coach and four, and at that early day, on these pine-barrens, it almost seemed as if he must have created them by magic, which makes one think of Cinderella and her rats, doesn't it? And indeed, in this case, the horses did turn into rats, as one may say, before their very eyes; the poor Thornes have no horses _now_" said the kind-hearted lady, pausing to shake her head sympathetically, and then speeding on again. "They say that rats desert a sinking ship--though I have always wondered how, since ships are not apt to sink at the piers, are they?--and I never heard that rats could make rafts, though squirrels can, they say--a bit of plank with their tails put up as a sail, though of course rats' tails would never do for that, they are so thin; but if rats _do_ desert their ship, Mistress Thorne will _never_