m, by telling me that the name of a new
annual was "Leptosiphon androsaceus."

Never was such a confusion of noises! The house door opened, and my
father's strong clear voice was heard in tones of warning. "Woman,
how can you swear to this goose?" Whilst the respondent squeaked out in
something between a scream and a cry, "Please your worship, the poor
bird having a-laid all his eggs, we had marked un, and so--" What
farther she would have said being drowned in a prodigious clatter
occasioned by the downfal of the ladder that supported the tall
blacksmith, which, striking against that whereon was placed the short
carpenter, overset that climbing machine also, and the clamor incident
to such a calamity overpowered all minor noises.

In the meanwhile I became aware that a fourth party of visiters had
entered the garden, my excellent neighbour, Miss Mortimer, and three
other ladies, whom she introduced as Mrs. and the Misses Dobbs; and the
botanists and florists having departed, and the disaster at the mast
being repaired, quiet was so far restored, that I ushered my guests into
the greenhouse, with something like a hope that we should be able to
hear each other speak.

Mrs. Dobbs was about the largest woman I had ever seen in my life,
fat, fair, and _fifty_ with a broad rosy countenance, beaming with
good-humour and contentment, and with a general look of affluence over
her whole comfortable person. She spoke in a loud voice which made
itself heard over the remaining din in the garden and out, and with a
patois between Scotch and Irish, which puzzled me, until I found from
her discourse that she was the widow of a linen manufacturer, in the
neighbourhood of Belfast.

"Ay," quoth she, with the most open-hearted familiarity, "times are
changed for the better with me since you and I parted in Cadogan Place.
Poor Mr. Dobbs left me and those two girls a fortune of---- Why, I
verily believe," continued she, interrupting herself, "that you don't
know me!"

"Honor!" said one of the young ladies to the other, "only look at this
butterfly!"

Honor! Was it, could it be Honor O'Callaghan, the slight, pale, romantic
visionary, so proud, so reserved, so abstracted, so elegant, and so
melancholy? Had thirty years of the coarse realities of life transformed
that pensive and delicate damsel into the comely, hearty, and to say
the truth, somewhat vulgar dame whom I saw before me? Was such a change
possible?

"Married a nobleman!"