deed I do not believe there ever was any human creature who could
keep so bolt upright as Ma, or put such an amount of aggravation into
one back! What's the matter, Ma? Ain't you well, Ma?"

"Doubtless I am very well," returned Mrs. Wilfer, turning her eyes
upon her youngest born, with scornful fortitude. "What should be the
matter with me?"

"You don't seem very brisk, Ma," retorted Lavvy the bold.

"Brisk?" repeated her parent. "Brisk? Whence the low expression,
Lavinia? If I am uncomplaining, if I am silently contented with my
lot, let that suffice for my family."

"Well, Ma," returned Lavvy, "since you will force it out of me, I must
respectfully take leave to say that your family are no doubt under the
greatest obligations to you for having an annual toothache on your
wedding-day, and that it's very disinterested in you, and an immense
blessing to them. Still, on the whole, it is impossible to be too
boastful even of that boon."

"You incarnation of sauciness," said Mrs. Wilfer, "do you speak like
that to me? On this day of all days in the year? Pray do you know what
would have become of you, if I had not bestowed my hand upon R. W.,
your father, on this day?"

"No, Ma," replied Lavvy, "I really do not; and, with the greatest
respect for your abilities and information, I very much doubt if you
do either."

Whether or no the sharp vigor of this sally on a weak point of Mrs.
Wilfer's entrenchments might have routed that heroine for the time, is
rendered uncertain by the arrival of a flag of truce in the person of
Mr. George Sampson: bidden to the feast as a friend of the family,
whose affections were now understood to be in course of transference
from Bella to Lavinia, and whom Lavinia kept--possibly in remembrance
of his bad taste in having overlooked her in the first instance--under
a course of stinging discipline.

"I congratulate you, Mrs. Wilfer," said Mr. George Sampson, who had
meditated this neat address while coming along, "on the day." Mrs.
Wilfer thanked him with a magnanimous sigh, and again became an
unresisting prey to that inscrutable toothache.

"I am surprized," said Mr. Sampson feebly, "that Miss Bella
condescends to cook."

Here Miss Lavinia descended on the ill-starred young gentleman with a
crushing supposition that at all events it was no business of his.
This disposed of Mr. Sampson in a melancholy retirement of spirit,
until the cherub arrived, whose amazement at the lovely woman'