“No,” said Letty; “Miss Drury says it was some young fellow of a cousin who got drowned in the Trent when he was about eighteen, bathing. I wonder what Dr. Leroy would say to this poem?” “He would not mind,” said Mrs. Woodburn. “Miss Heritage is not likely to pine in reality after a youth drowned years ago, with such a good-looking and clever lover as Dr. Frank Leroy. Perhaps it was a good thing the lad did get drowned. These Friends make too many cousin-marriages.” “Dear mother!” exclaimed both the daughters, “would you drown off the young Friends who were in danger of marrying cousins?” “No, no,” replied Mrs. Woodburn, laughing, “not so bad as that; I would only send such mischievous young fellows to Botany Bay.” With a burst of good-natured merriment at Mrs. Woodburn’s proposal for curing Quaker cousin-marriages, the conversation ended, Mrs. Woodburn going away to her household duties, and Letty to copy her poem. We have now given a pretty full picture of the life at Woodburn Grange, and a few glimpses into Friend life, as it was then. The reader, no doubt, thinks with us, that it is about time that our story marched at something more than a goose-step, with which I fully accord, and shall set forward with it accordingly after one more observation. Many readers, accustomed only to the measured manners betwixt masters and mistresses and domestic servants of to-day, and especially in towns, will probably think the free and often very personal speech of Betty Trapps out of nature, or, at least, out of place. Those who lived then in the country, perhaps some living there now, will recollect female servants who were quite as free-spoken and as brusquely-unflattering as Betty Trapps, and who, nevertheless, lived their twenty and thirty years in a family. Their industry, fidelity, and attachment to the family which they served, made a grand set-off against their unceremonious freedom. Such servants were not only tolerated but greatly valued, and it would have been a severe trial to part with them. A sort of relationship, approaching to kinship, seemed to grow up with such long and free service, and many of the old servants came to be called by the name of the family they lived in. Very probably Betty Trapps was often called in the village and neighbourhood, Betty at Woodburns’, and, at length, Betty Woodburn. One such Betty I knew, who used to hunt us children up, wash us, and pack us off to the village school. I should never forget her, were it only for rubbing my nose so hardly and crumplingly with the napkin after washing me. But I remember her still more for many a kind office, many a token of affection, many an absorbing story as we sate round the great blazing wood fire in the house-place of a winter’s evening, and Betty travelled back amongst the days and acquaintance of her youth, and found things that were to her still “very cutting,” and which we yet called for again and again. CHAPTER II.