"I could not resist the temptation of coming to see you!" cried Ada, sitting with Flora’s hand clasped in her own, and surveying her with a look of affectionate interest. "I hope that you have brought your twins to London with you?" said Flora. "Oh, the little cherubs! how I should delight to show them to you! But we left them in Wiltshire; it is a serious matter to travel with two infants not a year old." "Then I am afraid that your stay in London will be but short," observed Lady Legrange, "with two such powerful magnets drawing you away." "Only two!" laughed Ada; "you forget my husband’s children,--a whole scale of magnets, from five feet five to three feet nothing! I thought that I should never have managed to get away at all! But the Major was obliged to come to town to fit out his middy, and I took such a longing to revisit my old haunts, look at old faces, hear the sounds of carriage wheels, and knocks at the door, and street cries, and hurdy-gurdies again, that, like a dutiful mamma, I must see Jack off myself, and pay a flying visit to dear smoky London." "I can scarcely fancy you the staid, sober mother of such a large family!" exclaimed Flora. "Very odd--isn’t it? reversing the order of nature; instead of the quiet spinning caterpillar turning into the gay butterfly, the butterfly doffing its silken wings and beginning to crawl through the routine of daily duties, a prisoner to its cabbage-leaf. Only imagine me, Flora, mending stockings, shaping out pinafores, bandaging cut fingers and broken heads, scolding tradespeople, keeping servants in order, paying bills, and dancing babies till my arms ache!" "I should think the last a very delightful occupation," said Flora, suppressing a sigh. "None but a mother can tell how delightful," replied Ada; "but I do not take so kindly to all my domestic employments. I never yet took pleasure in solving the problem how far a shilling would go, nor finding out how it is that boys are always wanting new shoes, and how elbows and knees are perpetually running a race as to which should first run through the clothes. I believe that children have found out the secret of perpetual motion, to the great discomfort of those who have to look after little rogues!" "But children make a house so cheerful," said Flora, abstractedly. "And now, my dear child--ah! you see that I can’t get over my old way of talking to you yet--do give me your last news from Wingsdale. You know that I’m such a shocking correspondent that I know as little of what passes in the world beyond Salisbury Plain as if I were a denizen of the moon." "Poor old Mrs. Ward, my mother tells me, is now a confirmed invalid, and unable to leave her bed." "And your sweet mother herself?" "She never mentions her own health; her letters are full of the children."