While Charlie took down the address, his mother, with her own hand, served Mr John Morrall with a slice of cake and a comfortable glass of port-wine. “But I am sure you are comfortable yourself--you look so, at least.” “I am in the green-grocery trade,” said their visitor, putting up his hand again with “his respects,” “and got a good wife and three as likely childer as a man could desire. It ain’t just as easy as it might be keeping all things square, but we always get on; and lord! if folks had no crosses, they’d ne’er know they were born. Look at Sally, there’s a picture!--and after that, says I, it don’t become such like as us to complain.” Finally, having finished his refreshment, and left his own address with a supplementary note, and touch of the forehead--“It ain’t very far off; glad to serve you, ma’am”--Mr John Morrall withdrew. Then Charlie returned to his papers, but not quite so composedly as usual. “Put up my travelling-bag, mother,” said Charlie, after a few ineffectual attempts to resume; “I’ll not write any more to-night; it’s just nine o’clock. I’ll step over and see old Foggo, and be off to Ireland to-morrow, without delay.” CHAPTER XXVI. THE OXFORD ASSIZES. April, as cloudless and almost as warm as summer, a day when all the spring was swelling sweet in all the young buds and primroses, and the broad dewy country smiled and glistened under the rising of that sun, which day by day shone warmer and fuller on the woods and on the fields. But the point of interest was not the country; it was not a spring festival which drew so many interested faces along the high-road. An expectation not half so amiable was abroad among the gentry of Banburyshire--a great many people, quite an unusual crowd, took their way to the spring assizes to listen to a trial which was not at all important on its own account. The defendants were not even known among the county people, nor was there much curiosity about them. It was a family quarrel which roused the kind and amiable expectations of all these excellent people,--The Honourable Anastasia Rivers against Lord Winterbourne. It was popularly anticipated that Miss Anastasia herself was to appear in the witness-box, and everybody who knew the belligerents, delighted at the prospect of mischief, hastened to be present at the fight.