u have no objection to accompany us, and it is
not too far for you," said Mrs. Coleman (who evidently considered me in
the last stage of a decline), trotting into the breakfast-room where
I was lounging, book in hand, over the fire, wondering what possible
pretext I could invent for joining the ladies.

"I shall be only too happy," answered I, "and I think I can contrive to
walk as far as you can, Mrs. Coleman." "Oh! I don't know that," was the
reply, "I am a capital walker, I assure you. I remember a young man,
quite as young as you, and a good deal stouter, who could not walk
nearly as far as I can; to be sure," she added as she left the room, "he
had a wooden leg, poor fellow!"

I soon received a summons to start with the ladies, whom I found
awaiting my arrival on the terrace walk at the back of the house,
comfortably wrapped up in shawls and furs, for, although a bright sun
was shining, the day was cold and frosty.

"You must allow me to carry that for you," said I, laying violent hands
on a large basket, between which and a muff Mrs. Coleman was in vain
attempting to effect an amicable arrangement.

"Oh, dear! I'm sure you'll never be able to carry it--it's so dreadfully
heavy," was the reply.

"_Nous verrons_," answered I, swinging it on my forefinger, in order to
demonstrate its lightness.

"Take care--you mustn't do so!" exclaimed Mrs. Coleman in a tone of
extreme alarm; "you'll upset all my beautiful senna tea, and it will get
amongst the slices of Christmas plum-pudding, and the flannel that I'm
going to take for poor Mrs. Muddles's children to eat; do you know Mrs.
Muddles, Clara, my dear?"

Miss Saville replied in the negative, and Mrs. Coleman continued:--

"Ah! poor thing! she's a very hard-working, respectable, excellent young
woman; she has been married three years, and has got six children--no!
let me see--it's six years, and three children--that's it--though I can
never remember whether it's most pigs or children she has--four pigs,
did I say?--but it doesn't much signify, for the youngest is a boy and
will soon be fat enough to kill--the pig I mean, and they're all very
dirty, and have never ~266~~ been taught to read, because she takes in
washing, and has put a great deal too much starch in my night-cap this
week--only her husband drinks--so I mustn't say much about it, poor
thing, for we all have our failings, you know."

[Illustration: page266 An Unexpected Reverie]

With suchlike ramb