, her eyes being converted into a sort of red pulp, her rough
hair doubly dishevelled, her whole being run into tears. She was of no
more use now to go errands between the kitchen and the drawing-room, or
to read the cookery-book out loud, which was a process upon which Ursula
depended very much, to fix in her mind the exact ingredients and painful
method of preparation of the _entrees_ at which she was toiling. Betsy,
the former maid-of-all-work, now promoted under the title of cook, could
be trusted to roast the saddle of mutton, which, on consideration that
it was "a party," had been thought preferable to a leg, and she could
boil the fish, after a sort, and make good honest family soup, and the
rice-pudding or apple-tart, which was the nearest approach to luxury
indulged in at the Parsonage; but as for _entrees_, Betsy did not know
what they were. She had heard of made dishes indeed, and respectfully
afar off had seen them when she was kitchen-maid at Lady Weston's--the
golden age of her youthful inexperience. But this was so long ago, that
her recollections were rather confusing than useful to Ursula, when she
went downstairs to make her first heroic effort.

"La, Miss, that ain't how cook used to do 'em at Lady Weston's," Betsy
said, looking on with unbelieving eyes. She was sure of this negative,
but she was not sure of anything else, and utterly failed to give any
active assistance, after driving the girl desperate with her criticisms.
Altogether it was a confused and unpleasant day. When Reginald came in
in the morning, his sister had no time to speak to him, so anxious was
she and pre-occupied, and the drawing-room was being turned upside down,
to make it look more modern, more elegant, more like the Dorsets'
drawing-room, which was the only one Ursula knew. The comfortable round
table in the middle, round which the family had grouped themselves for
so long, had been pushed aside into a corner, leaving one fresh patch of
carpet, quite inappropriate, and unconnected with anything else; and
instead of the work and the school-books which so often intruded there,
all that was gaudy and uninteresting in the May library had been
produced to decorate the table; and even a case of wax flowers, a
production of thirty years since, which had been respectfully
transferred to a china closet by Ursula's better taste, but which in the
dearth of ornament she had brought back again. Reginald carried off the
wax flowers and repl