Mrs. Plowden, thus unexpectedly referred to, was taken in an undignified moment, when she had just begun to sip her first mouthful of very hot tea. She had felt that a second interruption in the very midst of what she had been saying was too much to be forgiven; but on being appealed to in this marked manner she changed her mind, and perceived that it was only Mrs. Swinford’s way. She swallowed the hot tea hastily, to her great discomfort, in her haste to respond. ‘Indeed I do,’ she said fervently, coughing a little. ‘Indeed I do---- I tell Emily often I would put my pride in my pocket, and insist on having Mab invited to make acquaintance with her father’s family. And she’s such a Pakenham, more like the Marquis than any daughter he has.’ ‘Oh, she’s such a Pakenham!’ said Mrs. Swinford, with a faint laugh. ‘I think, Jane,’ said Lady William, ‘that you are forgetting we walked here, and that it is time we were going back.’ ‘Oh, please, let these dear ladies finish their tea. Leo, Miss Plowden will take some cake. I am more interested than I can tell to hear that your child does not take after you, but is like the Pakenhams.’ The laugh was very soft, quite low, most ladylike, and, indeed, what is called poetically, silver in tone. ‘What an ill-advised little mortal!’ she said. V ‘Well,’ said Florence to Mab, ‘we two are left alone. We’re the young ones, we have to keep out of the way. But I am sure the Swinfords would rather have seen you and me than Emmy. We are the youngest and we are the most amusing.’ ‘Oh, please speak for yourself,’ said Mab, ‘I am not amusing at all.’ Florence looked at her with an air of consideration. ‘Well, perhaps that is true,’ she said; ‘you have a turn-up nose, and you ought to be lively, but appearances are very deceiving. I wonder what that army of observation will do to-day? I call them our army of observation because they have gone to spy out the land, and decide upon what are the proper lines of strategy. It’s quite new to us in Watcham to have a squire’s family: and then it is not even a common squire’s family. They are such superior people, and their ways are so unlike ours. Shouldn’t you say it would be a nice thing in Watcham to have people whose ways are not as our ways?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Mab, with the indifference of extreme youth, ‘we are well enough as we are.’ ‘It is easy for you to speak, with only Aunt Emily to think of, and your own way--and seventeen,’ said Florry, with a sigh. ‘I would give something to be seventeen again.’ ‘Why?’ said Mab. ‘It is the most ridiculous age--too old to be a child, too young to be anything else. One cares no more for dolls and that sort of thing, and one doesn’t care either for what the old people talk about. How they go on and on and talk! as if anybody minded.’ ‘You shouldn’t listen,’ said Florry.