In her second year she becomes a favoured guest in many country houses, where an effort is made to relieve the tedium of daily shooting parties by nightly frivolities. Soon afterwards she is presented at Court, and becomes herself a patroness to many foreigners who desire by the exercise of their talents to make a precarious living in England. By these she is considered to be one of the suns from which the great world draws its light and warmth. In her third Season she is sufficiently secure to introduce into Society her daughter, aged eighteen, who has hitherto (so she will inform her friends) been receiving a good education abroad. Accompanied by "my little girl," she may be seen, on fine afternoons, reclining in her spick and span Victoria, in the midst of the crowd in the Ladies' Mile. She is thus hedged round with a respectability which not even indiscreet inquiries after her late husband (for it is understood that he died and left her in comfort many years before) can disturb. She permits herself occasionally, it is true, to join _chic_ parties at fashionable restaurants, but these, since they are often under titled patronage, can scarcely be considered serious lapses from propriety. After having herself presented her daughter at Court, and having given (in London) a party which was attended by Royalty, she is beyond the reach of cavil or reproach. Here and there a jealous and disappointed social rival may still mutter dark hints about ancient vagaries, and meaning looks may still be exchanged by male and female gossips, but for the great mass of those who frequent Society she is as irreproachable as though her ancestry for twenty generations had been set down in the pages of _Burke_ or _Debrett_. Eventually she marries her daughter to the younger son of an Earl, and having made of the marriage festivities _the_ great social function of the Season, she herself soon afterwards retires to some extent from the business of Society, and devotes herself chiefly to the cultivation of simple pleasures and hot-house flowers in a luxurious retreat on the banks of the Thames. * * * * * MR. PUNCH'S DICTIONARY OF PHRASES. SOCIAL. "_Haven't missed a word you said_;" _i.e._, "Gracious! where was she?" "_Not exactly pretty, perhaps, but so nice_;" _i.e._, "As pappy in character as she is plain in face." RAILROAD AMENITIES. "_No, thanks; reading in a railway carriage always tries my poor eyes so_;" _i.e._, "I've better occupation for them just now." "_Pardon my drawing the blind; the glare in a railway carriage always makes my head ache_;" _i.e._, "Shows up my wrinkles and moustache-dye." THEATRICAL. "_She is an intelligent and experienced artist_;" _i.e._, Much too old for the part. EFFUSIVE FLATTERY.