Grace's surprise deprived her even of the power of exclamation, when she learned that her mistress stayed at home to sup with Master Herbert upon radishes. At night she listened with malignant curiosity, as she sat at work in her mistress's dressing-room, to the frequent bursts of laughter, and to the happy little voices of the festive company who were at supper in an adjoining apartment. "This will never do!" thought Grace; but presently the laughter ceased, and listening attentively, she heard the voice of one of _the young ladies_ reading. "Oh ho!" thought Grace, "if it comes to reading, Master Herbert will soon be asleep."--But though it had _come to reading_, Herbert was, at this instant, broad awake. At supper, when the radishes were distributed, Favoretta was very impatient to taste them; the first which she tasted was _hot_, she said, and she did not quite like it. "_Hot_!" cried Herbert, who criticized her language, in return for her criticism upon his radishes, "I don't think you can call a radish _hot_--it is cold, I think: I know what is meant by tasting sweet, or sour, or bitter." "Well," interrupted Favoretta, "what is the name for the taste of this radish which bites my tongue?" "_Pungent_," said Isabella, and she eagerly produced a quotation in support of her epithet-- "'And _pungent_ radish biting infant's tongue.'" "I know for once," said Matilda, smiling, "where you met with that line, I believe: is it not in Shenstone's Schoolmistress, in the description of the old woman's neat little garden?" "Oh! I should like to hear about that old woman's neat little garden," cried Herbert. "And so should I," said Mrs. Harcourt and Mad. de Rosier. Isabella quickly produced the book after supper, and read the poem. Herbert and Favoretta liked the old woman and her garden, and they were much interested for the little boy, who was whipped for having been gazing at the pictures on the horn-book, instead of learning his lesson; but, to Isabella's great mortification, they did not understand above half of what she read--the old English expressions puzzled them. "You would not be surprised at this, my dear Isabella," said Mad. de Rosier, "if you had made as many experiments upon children as I have. It is quite a new language to them; and what you have just been reading is scarcely intelligible to me, though you compliment me so much upon my knowledge of the English language." Mad. de Rosier took the book, and pointed to several words which she had not understood--such as "eftsoons," "_Dan_ Phoebus," and "_ne_ and _y_," which had made many lines incomprehensible. Herbert, when he heard Mad. de Rosier confess her ignorance, began to take courage, and came forward with his confessions. "_Gingerbread y rare_," he thought, was some particular kind of gingerbread; and "_Apples with cabbage net y covered o'er_" presented no delightful image to his mind, because, as he said, he did not know what the word _netycovered_ could mean.