In answer to which speech Arthur declared that, if she knew all, perhaps she would find less cause for envy than she imagined. Whereupon Mr. Black, a stout, middle-aged, light-haired, florid, good-looking, self-satisfied individual, observed: “Yes, that is what I always say, Dudley—my very words, almost. Nobody knows where the shoe pinches but the man who has to walk through life in it. And, after all, though the country is very nice, and Berrie Down a refreshing change from the city in such melting weather, still we all know it is not London. No,” repeated Mr. Black, striking the sod with the heel of his boot, and looking over the landscape as though daring the fields and the trees to contradict him, “it is not London.” “And a very good thing too it is not,” added Bessie; in answer to which addendum Mr. Black stated his belief that she was just the same as ever, and inquired how, if she disliked town so much, she expected to be able to spend her life in it. “As I have done hitherto,” she replied, “under protest.” “Persuade Gilbert when he comes down to turn farmer,” suggested Mrs. Black, sentimentally. “I only wish my lot had been cast among these peaceful scenes.” The only comment this remark elicited being a muttered sentence from Mr. Black, in which Bessie thought she heard something about “peaceful devils,” the conversation might have been considered ended, but for a voluntary statement from Master Marsden, a young gentleman in knickerbockers, to the effect that he hated London, but that the country was jolly. He had been down in Surrey in the spring, he went on to inform the assembled company in a shrill alto, where he robbed fifty—oh! a hundred—birds’ nests, and wasn’t it prime! “Then you were wicked boy,” said Miss Lally, with that charming promptitude of judgment which is a peculiarity of her sex. “Why? don’t you rob nests?” asked the new arrival, in answer to which question Lally shook her comical little head gravely. “Well, you must be a muff; but then, to be sure, you are a girl,” said Master Marsden, in a tone which was at once contemptuous and explanatory. “She is not a great ill-mannered boy like you, Harry, at any rate,” observed Bessie, whose fault certainly was not reticence in expressing her sentiments. “I don’t want you to talk to me, I don’t,” said the boy, turning upon her in a manner which spoke of former passages of arms between them. “Well, it is not every one who gets more than he wants,” she replied; at which juncture Mr. Black called the young lady to order, declaring the way she talked to the boy too bad—“just like breaking a thingumderry upon a whatever’s its name.” “If you mean a butterfly upon a wheel, I beg to remark that Harry is as unlike a butterfly as anything I can imagine,” answered Miss Bessie. “We don’t expect little boys to be butterflies,” said that general peace-maker, Mrs. Black.