But luncheon, on the contrary, is a light, exhilarating, free-and-easy meal. Even Mr. Sawyer, as he finished his leg of pheasant and glass of brown sherry, felt wonderfully restored by his repast. “Cissy” was a good “doer” (ladies generally are, about two o’clock), and, till she had disposed of her meal, gave her neighbour a little breathing-time, and leisure to look about him. I have often thought, although I am by no means the first person who has made the observation, both in and out of print, how true it is that it may be a huge disadvantage to a girl to be seen in company with her mother. It is sometimes discouraging enough to reflect that the coveted treasure must eventually expand into a facsimile of the dragon on guard. Fancy, if the fruit in the Gardens of the Hesperides had been eggs instead of apples, each golden shell enclosing the germ of just such a monster as was grinning at the gate! To be sure, the resemblance may cut the other way as well. I _have_ seen mammas whom the fairest of Eve’s daughters might be proud to resemble; but it is sometimes hard upon the young Phœbe to have perpetually at her side the shapeless Mother Bunch, into the facsimile of which she must eventually grow. Mr. Sawyer, gazing intently on his hostess discussing her cutlet and glass of port-wine with considerable relish, _acknowledged_, though he would not _accept_, the warning. Miss Dove took after Mamma rather than Papa. The matron’s red face was a brilliant colour in the girl; and the exuberant proportions of the one, suggestive of good-humour, good-living, and motherly content, were but the full, flowing outlines of perfect symmetry in the other. However, they all got on remarkably well. Even the Honourable Crasher made a feeble joke, of which the point somehow escaped his listeners—without, however, destroying his own enjoyment in its delivery. By the time Papa proposed an adjournment to the stables, to inspect the four-year-old—“Cissy” pleading for two minutes’ law, to put her hat on—they were all in high good-humour. If “one spur in the head” be “worth two in the heel,” I think it is equally true that a slight stimulant about 1.30 is twice as effectual as a feast at 7.45.