With far different sentiments from these languid and indolent observers, the Athelings prepared for their unusual expedition. Firmly compressed into Mrs Atheling’s purse were five ten-pound notes, crisp and new, and the girls, with a slight tremor of terror enhancing their delight, had secretly vowed that Mamma should not be permitted to bring anything in the shape of money home. They were going to spend fifty pounds. That was their special mission--and when you consider that very rarely before had they helped at the spending of more than fifty shillings, you may fancy the excitement and delight of this family enterprise. They had calculated beforehand what everything was to cost--they had left a margin for possibilities--they had all their different items written down on a very long piece of paper, and now the young ladies were dancing Bell and Beau through the garden, and waiting for Mamma. For the twin babies were to form part of this most happy party. Bell and Beau were to have an ecstatic drive in that most delightful of carriages which the two big children and the two little ones at present stood regarding with the sincerest admiration. If Agnes had any doubt at all about the fly, it was a momentary fear lest somebody should suppose it to be their own carriage--a contingency not at all probable. In every other view of the question, the fly was scarcely second even to Mrs Edgerley’s sublime and stately equipage; and it is quite impossible to describe the rapture with which this magnificent vehicle was contemplated by Bell and Beau. At last Mamma came down stairs in somewhat of a flutter, and by no means satisfied that she was doing right in thus giving in to the girls. Mrs Atheling still, in spite of all their persuasions, could not help thinking it something very near a sin to spend wilfully, and at one doing, so extraordinary a sum as fifty pounds--“a quarter’s income!” she said solemnly. But Papa was very nearly as foolish on the subject as Agnes and Marian, and the good mother could not make head against them all. She was alarmed at this first outbreak of “awful” extravagance, but she could not quite refuse to be pleased either with the pleasant piece of business, with the delight of the girls, and the rapture of the babies, nor to feel the glory in her own person of “shopping” on so grand a scale-- “My sister and my sister’s child, Myself and children three.”