careless manners of the young people of to-day, who loll upon
easy-chairs in the presence of their elders, and who slouch into a room
with constrained familiarity and awkward ease," replied Miss Farringdon,
who had never sat in an easy-chair in her life, and whose back was still
as straight as an arrow.

So in the afternoon of that day Christopher and Elisabeth attended Mrs.
Bateson's tea-party.

The Batesons lived in a clean little cottage on the west side of High
Street, and enjoyed a large garden to the rearward. It was a singular
fact that whereas all their windows looked upon nothing more interesting
than the smokier side of the bleak and narrow street, their pigsties
commanded a view such as can rarely be surpassed for beauty and extent
in England. But Mrs. Bateson called her front view "lively" and her back
view "dull," and congratulated herself daily upon the aspect and the
prospect of her dwelling-place. The good lady's ideas as to what
constitutes beauty in furniture were by no means behind her opinions as
to what is effective in scenery. Her kitchen was paved with bright red
tiles, which made one feel as if one were walking across a coral reef,
and was flanked on one side with a black oak dresser of unnumbered
years, covered with a brave array of blue-and-white pottery. An artist
would have revelled in this kitchen, with its delicious effects in red
and blue; but Mrs. Bateson accounted it as nothing. Her pride was
centred in her parlour and its mural decorations, which consisted
principally of a large and varied assortment of funeral-cards, neatly
framed and glazed. In addition to these there was a collection of family
portraits in daguerreotype, including an interesting representation of
Mrs. Bateson's parents sitting side by side in two straight-backed
chairs, with their whole family twining round them--a sort of Swiss
Family Laocoon; and a picture of Mr. Bateson--in the attitude of Juliet
and the attire of a local preacher--leaning over a balcony, which was
overgrown with a semi-tropical luxuriance of artificial ivy, and which
was obviously too frail to support him. But the masterpiece in Mrs.
Bateson's art-gallery was a soul-stirring illustration of the death of
the revered John Wesley. This picture was divided into two compartments:
the first represented the room at Wesley's house in City Road, with the
assembled survivors of the great man's family weeping round his bed; and
the second depicted the de