ng after Stephen,
it'll be a fine kettle o' fish, I can tell you. Oh dear, but you've a
deal to be thankful for, and only one to trouble you! The bicker those
lads do make!"

"We have all something wherefore we may be thankful, friend," said Lady
Louvaine gently, when Mrs Abbott stopped to breathe.

"Well, then, there's the maids--Mall, and Silence, and Prissy, and
Dorcas, and Hester--and I can promise you, they make such a racket
amongst 'em, I'm very nigh worn to a shadow."

Aubrey and Lettice were giving funny glances at each other, and doing
their utmost not to disgrace the family by laughing. If Mrs Abbott
were worn to a shadow, shadows were very portly and substantial
articles.

"I declare, that Prissy! she's such a rattle as never you saw! no
getting a word in for her. I tell her many a time, I wonder her tongue
does not ache, such a chatterbox as she is. I'm no talker, you see;
nobody can say such a thing of me, but as to her--"

A curious sound in Aubrey's direction was rapidly followed by a cough.

"Eh now, don't you say you've a spring cough!" ejaculated Mrs Abbott,
turning her artillery on that young gentleman. "Horehound, and mallow,
and coltsfoot, they're the best herbs; and put honey to 'em, and take it
fasting of a morrow. There be that saith this new stuff of late come
up--tobago, or what they call it--my husband says he never heard of
aught with so many names. Talking o' names, have you seen that young
maid, daughter of the baker new set up at back here? Whatever on earth
possessed him to call her Penelope? Dear heart, but they say there's a
jolly brunt betwixt my Lord Rich and his Lady--she that was my Lady
Penelope Devereux, you know. My Lord he is a great Puritan, and a
favourer of that way; and my Lady, she likes a pretty gown and a gay
dance as well as e'er a one; so the wars have fallen out betwixt 'em--"

"If it like you, Mistress Abbott," said Charity, opening the door
immediately after a knock, "here's your Ben, that says your master wants
you."

"Ay," shouted Ben from the door in no dulcet tones, "and he said if you
didn't come, he'd fetch you. You were safe to be gossiping somewhere,
he said, and says he--"

"Take that for your imperence, Sir!" was his mother's answer, hurrying
to the door, with a gesture suited to the words. "Well, I do vow, if
ever I come forth to have half a word with a neighbour, that man o'
mine's sure for to call it gossiping.--Get away wi' thee