"Of course not, but Frank is only talking. We have masters now in music and singing and geography, and I am learning _Morley’s Airs_[1] straight through, besides roundelays and madrigals. And we have a new harpsichord, though the Lord General, my father, likes best the organ or the lute." [1] Popular and patriotic songs having the same vogue then as _Moore’s Melodies_ in our era. "And besides all this," continued Frances, "we are studying the French tongue, and history, and the use of the globes; and Mrs. Katon comes twice every week to teach us how to make wax flowers and fruit and take the new stitches in tatting and embroidery. And, Jane, I have got a glass bowl full of goldfish. They came from China, and there are no more of them, I think, in England. Come with me, and you shall see them." "Never mind the fish now, Frank," said Mary; "there is the bell for dinner, and we must answer it at once or we shall grieve mother." They rose at these words and went quickly to the dining-room. Mrs. Cromwell, leaning upon the arm of her daughter, Mrs. Ireton, was just entering it, and Jane wondered silently at the state these simple country gentry had so easily assumed. Officers of the household, in rich uniforms, waited on all their movements and served them with obsequious respect; and they bore their new honours as if they had been born to the purple. Mrs. Cromwell’s simplicity stood her in the place of dignity, and the piety and stern republicanism of Mrs. Ireton gave to her bearing that indifference to outward pomp which passed readily for inherited nobility, while the beauty of Mrs. Claypole and her love of splendour fitted her surroundings with more than accidental propriety. All the women of this famous household were keenly alive to the glory of those achievements which had placed them in a palace, and all of them rendered to its great head every title of honour his mighty deeds claimed as their right. "The General dines with the Speaker," said Mrs. Cromwell; and she was herself about to say grace when Doctor Verity entered. He was greeted with a chorus of welcomes, and readily took his seat at the foot of the table and spoke the few words of grateful prayer which sweetened and blessed every Puritan meal. Then in answer to some remark about Cromwell’s absence he said, "The Lord General is much troubled about the Worcester prisoners. There has just been a pitiful kind of triumph made out of their miseries. I don’t approve of it, not I, God forbid! They have been made a spectacle for men and angels, marched from Hampstead Heath, through Aldgate, Cheapside, and the Strand, to Westminster—hungry, beggarly creatures, many of them wounded, and nearly naked." "Poor fellows," said Mrs. Cromwell. "Sturdy, surly fellows, madame. I don’t envy the men who will have to manage them as slaves." "They go to the Barbadoes, I hear?" "Yes,—it is Scotland no more for them." "Is that right, Doctor?"