" replied Alex. "Stay, good sister. I must to
bed, and you should follow, or you will not be in trim to sing to the
lady fair to-morrow. Come!"

"The bees make the honey, Alex; it would not answer if all were
butterflies. You are one of those who think that folks were made to make
your life pleasant."

"Bees can sting, I see," was Alexander's remark. "But give me a kiss,
Lina; we don't forget our old home-love, do we? Let us hold together."

"I am willing, dear Alex; if I am crabbed at times, make excuses. These
servants are a pest. I could fancy this last is a thief: the odds and
ends vanish, who knows how? Oh! I do long for the German households
which go on oiled wheels, and don't stop and put everyone out--time and
temper too--like these English ones."

"We will all hasten back to Hanover, sister, with the telescopes at our
backs, when----"

"When the thirty-foot mirror is made. Ah!--a----"

This last interjection was prolonged, and turned into a sigh, almost a
groan.

When Alex was gone his sister got up and walked two or three times round
the room, drank a glass of cold water, opened the shutters, and looked
out into the night.

The moon had passed out of the ken of Rivers Street now, but its light
was throwing sharp blue shadows from the roofs of the houses, and the
figure of the watch-man with his multitude of capes as he stood
motionless opposite the window from which Caroline Herschel was looking
out into the night.

Presently the dark shadow of the watchman's figure moved. He sounded his
rattle and walked on, calling in his ringing monotone:

"It is just two o'clock, and a fine frosty morning. All well."

As the sound died away with the watchman's heavy footsteps, Caroline
Herschel closed the shutter, and saying, "I am wide awake now," reseated
herself at the table, and wrote steadily on till the clock from the
Abbey church had struck four, when at last she went to bed.

Her naturally strong physique, her unemotional nature, and her calm and
quiet temper, except when pestered by her domestics' misdemeanours, were
in Caroline Herschel's favour. Her head had scarcely touched the pillow
before she was in a sound refreshing sleep, while many of the votaries
of fashion tossed on their uneasy beds till day-dawn.

CHAPTER IV.

MUSIC.

Griselda Mainwaring was up very much earlier than Lady Betty on all
occasions, but on the morning after the ball in Wiltshire's Rooms she
was dressed and i