aulâ_, a little Batchelor, your son, who had the toothache all night in your bedroom?” These thoughts passed rapidly through my mind as I helped myself to the comfortable meal before me. “I say, what a lot of muffins you’re eating!” cried innocent Master Lovel. Now the married, the wealthy, the prosperous Biddlecombe only took his wretched scrap of dry toast. “Aha!” you say, “this man is consoling himself after his misfortune.” O churl! and do you grudge me consolation? “Thank you, dear Miss Prior. Another cup, and plenty of cream, if you please.” Of course, Lady Baker was not at table when I said, “Dear Miss Prior,” at breakfast. Before her ladyship I was as mum as a mouse. Elizabeth found occasion to whisper to me during the day in her demure way: “This is a very rare occasion. Lady B. never allows me to breakfast alone with Mr. Lovel, but has taken her extra nap, I suppose, because you and Mr. and Mrs. Biddlecombe were here.” [Illustration: “WHERE THE SUGAR GOES.”] Now it may be that one of the double doors of the room which I inhabited was occasionally open, and that Mr. Batchelor’s eyes and ears are uncommonly quick, and note a number of things which less observant persons would never regard or discover; but out of this room, which I occupied for some few days, now and subsequently, I looked out as from a little ambush upon the proceedings of the house, and got a queer little insight into the history and characters of the personages round about me. The two grandmothers of Lovel’s children were domineering over that easy gentleman, as women—not grandmothers merely, but sisters, wives, aunts, daughters, when the chance is given them—will domineer. Ah! Glorvina, what a grey mare you might have become had you chosen Mr. Batchelor for your consort! (But this I only remark with a parenthetic sigh.) The two children had taken each the side of a grandmamma, and whilst Master Pop was declared by his maternal grandmother to be a Baker all over, and taught to despise sugar-baking and trade, little Cecilia was Mrs. Bonnington’s favourite, repeated Watts’s hymns with fervent precocity, declared that she would marry none but a clergyman; preached infantine sermons to her brother and maid about worldliness; and somewhat wearied me, if the truth must be told, by the intense self-respect with which she regarded her own virtues. The old ladies had that love for each other, which one may imagine that their relative positions would engender. Over the bleeding and helpless bodies of Lovel and his worthy and kind stepfather, Mr. Bonnington, they skirmished, and fired shots at each other. Lady B. would give hints about second marriages, and second families, and so forth, which of course made Mrs. Bonnington wince. Mrs. B. had the better of Lady Baker, in consequence of the latter’s notorious pecuniary irregularities. _She_ had never had recourse to her son’s purse, she could thank Heaven. She was not afraid of meeting