“Not with anything,” said Mrs. Mackridge, with an air of crushing repartee, and drank. “What won’t they say next?” said Miss Fison. “They do say such things!” said Mrs. Booch. “They say,” said Mrs. Mackridge, inflexibly, “the doctors are not recomm-an-ding it now.” My Mother: “No, ma’am?” Mrs. Mackridge: “No, ma’am.” Then, to the table at large: “Poor Sir Roderick, before he died, consumed great quan-ta-ties of sugar. I have sometimes fancied it may have hastened his end.” This ended the first skirmish. A certain gloom of manner and a pause was considered due to the sacred memory of Sir Roderick. “George,” said my mother, “don’t kick the chair!” Then, perhaps, Mrs. Booch would produce a favourite piece from her repertoire. “The evenings are drawing out nicely,” she would say, or if the season was decadent, “How the evenings draw in!” It was an invaluable remark to her; I do not know how she would have got along without it. My mother, who sat with her back to the window, would always consider it due to Mrs. Booch to turn about and regard the evening in the act of elongation or contraction, whichever phase it might be. A brisk discussion of how long we were to the longest or shortest day would ensue, and die away at last exhausted. Mrs. Mackridge, perhaps, would reopen. She had many intelligent habits; among others she read the paper—_The Morning Post_. The other ladies would at times tackle that sheet, but only to read the births, marriages, and deaths on the front page. It was, of course, the old _Morning Post_ that cost threepence, not the brisk coruscating young thing of to-day. “They say,” she would open, “that Lord Tweedums is to go to Canada.” “Ah!” said Mr. Rabbits; “dew they?” “Isn’t he,” said my mother, “the Earl of Slumgold’s cousin?” She knew he was; it was an entirely irrelevant and unnecessary remark, but still, something to say. “The same, ma’am,” said Mrs. Mackridge. “They say he was extremelay popular in New South Wales. They looked up to him greatlay. I knew him, ma’am, as a young man. A very nice pleasant young fella.” Interlude of respect. “’Is predecessor,” said Rabbits, who had acquired from some clerical model a precise emphatic articulation without acquiring at the same time the aspirates that would have graced it, “got into trouble at Sydney.” “Haw!” said Mrs. Mackridge, scornfully, “so am tawled.” “’E came to Templemorton after ’e came back, and I remember them talking ’im over after ’e’d gone again.” “Haw?” said Mrs. Mackridge, interrogatively. “’_Is_ fuss was quotin’ poetry, ma’am. ’E said—what was it ’e said—‘They lef’ their country for their country’s good,’—which in some way was took to remind them of their being originally convic’s, though now reformed. Every one I ’eard speak, agreed it was takless of ’im.”