delusion, which will work itself off in a week or two; that the same disease has visited the family once every year about the same period ever since they can recollect, and that it will now, as formerly, only furnish a little harmless temporary excitement in the house. Armed with a negative approval from these relations, together with a pound note, the young notable starts next Saturday morning between seven and eight o’clock; and after taking half an hour to array herself in an undress, studiously selecting for the occasion a shabbyish shawl, and a pair of shoes that she puts on, only on “bad days,” also a straw bonnet faded both in the material and in the riband, she sallies forth with her basket to the market. With what an air of knowingness she goes from cart to cart, examining, and tasting, and smelling their contents! How she tries to elicit, by cross-questioning the man in the sky-blue coat, or the blowsky girl in the dimity head-gear, sitting amidst their savoury boxes with leather hinges, every particular in the history of the butter; where and when it was made, and why it happens to be up this morning, and so forth. How she wanders amidst the egg women, holding up the eggs between her and the light, asking if they be sure they are not Orkney eggs, and what their probable age may be? What with toiling up and down the market for three quarters of an hour, and beating down the prices in a most exemplary manner, she at last accomplishes her purchases, and brings home her cargo of native produce. When you come down to breakfast, you will be at once reminded of what has been going on, by the air of superiority and triumph assumed by Miss Notable. She thinks that by rising an hour sooner than any body else, and saving, as she thinks, the sum of twopence, she has purchased the character of a thrifty personage, and, consequently, is entitled to look down upon the whole house. There is no end to her account of how she managed to find out the best butter in the cart, and how she higgled the man out of a halfpenny in the pound. When she places a slice of this extraordinary butter before you, she takes care to show you how fresh the colour is, and waits with impatience to hear your expected, and not to be dispensed with, praise of its taste. The butter she has bought is, in fact, her pet for the whole week. She considers it as her butter: and if any visitor slight it, by not paying it the necessary compliments, he is of course not indebted to her for any future invitation to the house.