“I’ll go up to the Court and sit with Lady Bell,” Sally Walsh would propose, dangling her hat by its ribands, and squaring the mottled elbows which her mits left exposed. “I don’t mind though she is as mum as a mouse and as glum as an owl, I’ll keep her from going melancholy mad;” and then the young girl would say, not for a moment concealing that she looked for some benefit to herself in the benefit conferred on another, “Lady Bell may let me take the shape of a habit shirt,” or “the peaches are prime ripe in the Court gardens.” Mrs. Walsh bade her daughter not hanker after the follies of dress, or the flesh-pots of Egypt, but she did not think the hankering in this case very unnatural or unreasonable. “What do you think I found my lady doing?” Sally would report faithfully to her mother on her return; “Carving cherry-stones! I told her she would blind herself; but, of course, she whittled away. The Squire’s list shoes were worn out, and I said I should make him a new pair, and he said, there was a wench of some use in the world!” “Then be thankful, child, and don’t learn bragging from poor silly Lady Bell.” “She didn’t know how to make list shoes, mother, but she looked at me after I had the list from Tofts; she is quick, Lady Bell, for, as dandily as she is, she picked up the making in no time. There,” she said, “you can hear her, mother, in her low mincing tones, ‘now I can show Tofts how to supply Mr. Trevor with list shoes in future, you need not trouble to make any more, Miss Walsh;’ these were all the thanks I had.” “You taught the fine lady one useful lesson,” Mrs. Walsh encouraged her daughter. But though Lady Bell might try, and might sometimes succeed in asserting her supremacy and in distancing her foes, she could not fight with their weapons. When they invaded her privacy, invited themselves to be her companions, spied upon her, if that could be called spying which was open and bold, and all to do her good, they drove her nearly frantic. CHAPTER XI. THE ELECTION AT PEASMARSH. Goaded as Lady Bell was, and with the summer sunshine on the wane, and the autumn gloom approaching, she was ready to welcome any change. She heard with satisfaction, one afternoon, a surly announcement from her husband that she was to accompany him to Peasmarsh, and that she had better make preparations for remaining several weeks in the county town. Lady Bell took such slight notice of what was passing around her, and had so little knowledge of the world, that she did not connect the announcement with the circumstance that there had been a great deal of whipping and spurring of gentlemen lately to Trevor Court, where they were shut up with the Squire of a morning, or drinking with him after dinner. They were visitors to whom Lady Bell was indifferent, in addition to the Squire’s not caring for her having intercourse with them.