On the days when Monsieur de Rochermont comes grandmamma wears the lavender silk for dinner and the best Alençon cap, and Hephzibah stays so long dressing her that I often have to help the servant to lay the table for dinner. The Marquis never arrives until the afternoon, and leaves within a couple of days. He brings an old valet called Theodore, and they have bandboxes and small valises, and I believe--only I must not say it aloud--that the bandboxes contain his wigs. The one for dinner is curled and scented, and the travelling one is much more ordinary. I am sent to bed early on those evenings. Each time the Marquis brings a present of game or fine fruit for grandmamma and a box of bonbons for me. I don't like sweets much, but the boxes are charming. These visits happen twice a year, in June and December, wherever we happen to be. The only young men in this part of the world are the curate and two hobbledehoys, the sons of a person who lives in the place beyond Ledstone, and they are common and uninteresting and _parvenu_. All these people came to call as soon as we arrived, and parsons and old maids by the dozen, but grandmamma's exquisite politeness upsets them. I suppose they feel that she considers they are not made of the same flesh and blood as she is, so we never get intimate with anybody whatever places we are in. Hephzibah has a lover. You can get one in that class no matter how ugly you are, it seems, and he is generally years and years younger than you are. Hephzibah's is the man who comes round with the grocer's cart for orders, and he is young enough to be her son. I have seen them talking when I have been getting the irons hot to iron grandmamma's best lace. Hephzibah's face, which is a grayish yellow generally, gets a pale beet-root up to her ears, and she looks so coy. But I dare say it feels lovely to her to stand there at the back door and know some one is interested in what she does and says.