“My daughter is obliged by your politeness, sir, but will not trespass upon it further,” replied the General coldly. “My dear Annie,” he continued, “it only wants ten minutes to nine; you will oblige me by preparing for breakfast. Punctuality is a quality by the neglect of which all order is subverted, propriety set at nought, much valuable time wasted which can never be recalled, and the comfort of a family totally destroyed. Your excellent aunt is aware of my opinion on this subject, and during the twelve years she has done me the favour to preside over my household she has never kept me waiting one minute.” “‘Well, dear papa, I’ll do my best to please you,” returned Annie; “but,” she added, laying her hand on-his shoulder caressingly, and looking up in his face with a glance half mischievous and half imploring, “you won’t expect me to be so terribly perfect as Aunt Martha? Recollect, she is three times as old as I am, and ought therefore to be three times as wise.” The General tried to look displeased, but he could not resist Annie for he was human after all; so, stroking her glossy curls, he told her that Mrs. Botherfille (a serious schoolmistress, who, for the trifling consideration of £300 per annum, condescended to allow the youthful female aristocracy of the land to sit at her feet and learn from her lips how to regenerate society through the medium of frivolous accomplishments) had failed in curing her of talking nonsense, at which Annie laughed merrily and then tripped off, turning as she passed Lewis to take a last glance at the newly-arranged flowers, and saying, “Now, don’t they look pretty, Mr. Arundel?” As the directions in regard to Lewis and his pupil’s separate establishment (for such the isolated suite of rooms they were to occupy might be considered) had not as yet been communicated to the servants, General Grant requested the favour of Lewis’s company at breakfast with as much ceremony as he could have used if he had been inviting a royal duke to a banquet; and as a request from such a quarter was equivalent to a command, Lewis could only comply. Half a minute before the clock struck nine, Miss Livingstone, that human hedge-hog, rustled into the breakfast-room, more stiff and starched in mind and body than any other living creature. As for her cap, a railway train might have passed over it without injuring that rigid mystery, while her gown was at the least sabre, not to say bullet-proof. If ever there were a wife fitted for our Iron Duke, that adamantine spinster was the woman--only that to have married her would have required more courage than twenty Waterloos!