"I was never there," replied Adelaide, feeling the confession, when made to Lord Hawkesley, to be nothing but a humiliation. "Indeed! You would enjoy a London season." "Oh, so much! I know nothing of the London season, except from books. A contrast to your lordship, you will say," she added, with a laugh. "You must be almost tired of it; _désillusionné_." "What's that in English?" inquired Lord Hawkesley, whose French studies, as far as they had extended, had been utterly thrown away upon him. Labouring under the deficiency, he had to make the best of it, and did it with a boast. "Used up, I suppose you mean?" Adelaide coloured excessively. She wondered if he was laughing at her, and made a mental vow never to speak French to a lord again. "Will you think me exacting, Miss Dare, if I trespass upon you for another song?" Adelaide did not think him exacting in the least. She was ready to sing as long as he pleased. CHAPTER V. CHARLOTTE EAST'S PRESENT. Towards dusk, that same evening, Charlotte East went over to Mrs. Buffle's for some butter. After she was served, Mrs. Buffle--who was a little shrimp of a woman, with a red nose--crossed her arms upon the counter and bent her face towards Charlotte's. "Have you heered the news?" asked she. "Mary Ann Cross is going to make a match of it with Ben Tyrrett." "Is she?" said Charlotte. "They had better wait a few years, both of them, until they shall have put by something." "They're neither of them of the putting-by sort," returned Mrs. Buffle. "Them Crosses is the worst girls to spend in all the Fair: unless it's Carry Mason. She don't spare her back, she don't. The wonder is, how she gets it." "Young girls will dress," observed Charlotte, carelessly. Mrs. Buffle laughed. "You speak as if you were an old one." "I feel like one sometimes, Mrs. Buffle. When children are left, as I and Robert were, with a baby brother to bring up, and hardly any means to do it upon, it helps to steady them. Tom----" Eliza Tyrrett burst in at the door, with a violence that made its bell twang and tinkle. "Half-a-pound o' dips, long-tens, Dame Buffle, and be quick about it," was her order. "There's such a flare-up, in at Mason's." "A flare-up!" repeated Mrs. Buffle, who was always ripe and ready for a dish of scandal, whether it touched on domestic differences, or on young girls' improvidence in the shape of dress. "Is Mason and her having a noise?" "It's not him and her. It's about Carry. Hetty Mason locked Carry up this afternoon, and Mason never came home at all to tea; he went and had some beer instead, and a turn at skittles, and she wouldn't let Carry out. He came in just now, and his wife told him a whole heap about Carry, and Mason went up to the cock-loft, undid the door, and threatened to kick Carry down. They're having it out in the kitchen, all three." "What has Carry done?" asked Mrs. Buffle eagerly.