All the presents which Newcome had ever transmitted to his sister-in-law from India had been taken out of the cotton and lavender in which the faithful creature kept them. It was a fine hot day in June, but I promise you Miss Honeyman wore her blazing scarlet Cashmere shawl; her great brooch, representing the Taj of Agra, was in her collar; and her bracelets (she used to say, I am given to understand they are called bangles, my dear, by the natives) decorated the sleeves round her lean old hands, which trembled with pleasure as they received the kind grasp of the Colonel of colonels. How busy those hands had been that morning! What custards they had whipped!—what a triumph of pie-crusts they had achieved! Before Colonel Newcome had been ten minutes in the house, the celebrated veal-cutlets made their appearance. Was not the whole house adorned in expectation of his coming? Had not Mr. Kuhn, the affable foreign gentleman of the first-floor lodgers, prepared a French dish? Was not Betty on the look-out, and instructed to put the cutlets on the fire at the very moment when the Colonel’s carriage drove up to her mistress’s door? The good woman’s eyes twinkled, the kind old hand and voice shook, as, holding up a bright glass of Madeira, Miss Honeyman drank the Colonel’s health. “I promise you, my dear Colonel,” says she, nodding her head, adorned with a bristling superstructure of lace and ribbons, “I promise you, that I can drink your health in good _wine!_” The wine was of his own sending, and so were the China fire-screens, and the sandalwood workbox, and the ivory cardcase, and those magnificent pink and white chessmen, carved like little sepoys and mandarins, with the castles on elephants’ backs, George the Third and his queen in pink ivory, against the Emperor of China and lady in white—the delight of Clive’s childhood, the chief ornament of the old spinster’s sitting-room. Miss Honeyman’s little feast was pronounced to be the perfection of cookery; and when the meal was over, came a noise of little feet at the parlour door, which being opened, there appeared, first, a tall nurse with a dancing baby; second and third, two little girls with little frocks, little trousers, long ringlets, blue eyes, and blue ribbons to match; fourth, Master Alfred, now quite recovered from his illness, and holding by the hand, fifth, Miss Ethel Newcome, blushing like a rose.