ave that poor
lad wedded to a pert, saucy, ill-tempered little moppet, bred up that
den of iniquity, Queen Catherine's court, where my poor Baron never
trusted me after he fell in with the religion, and had heard of King
Antony's calling me the Swan of England.'

At that moment there was a loud shriek, half-laugh, half-fright, coming
through the window, and Lady Thistlewood, starting up, exclaimed, 'The
child will be drowned! Box their ears, Berenger, and bring them in
directly.'

Berenger, at her bidding, hurried out of the room into the hall, and
thence down a flight of steps leading into a square walled garden, with
a couple of stone male and female marine divinities accommodating their
fishy extremities as best they might on the corners of the wall. The
square contained a bowling-green of exquisitely-kept turf, that looked
as if cut out of green velvet, and was edged on its four sides by a
raised broad-paved walk, with a trimming of flower-beds, where the
earliest blossoms were showing themselves. In the centre of each side
another paved path intersected the green lawn, and the meeting of these
two diameters was at a circular stone basin, presided over by another
merman, blowing a conch on the top of a pile of rocks. On the gravelled
margin stood two distressed little damsels of seven and six years
old, remonstrating with all their might against the proceedings of
a roguish-looking boy of fourteen of fifteen, who had perched their
junior--a fat, fair, kitten-like element of mischief, aged about
five--_en croupe_ on the merman, and was about, according to her
delighted request, to make her a bower of water, by extracting the plug
and setting the fountain to play; but as the fountain had been still
all the winter, the plug was hard of extraction, especially to a young
gentleman who stood insecurely, with his feet wide apart upon pointed
and slippery point of rock-work; and Berenger had time to hurry up,
exclaiming, 'Giddy pate! Dolly would Berenger drenched to the skin.'

'And she has on her best blue, made out of mother's French farthingale,'
cried the discreet Annora.

'Do you know, Dolly, I've orders to box your ears, and send you in?'
added Berenger, as he lifted his half-sister from her perilous position,
speaking, as he did so, without a shade of foreign accent, though with
much more rapid utterance than was usual in England. She clung to him
without much alarm, and retaliated by an endeavour to box his ears