w. My object is to habituate your
mind--"

"Philippa, I beg you once more to confine your exertions, in that way,
to your own more lofty mind. Again I refuse to have my mind, or
whatever it is that does duty for it, habituated to anything. A gracious
Providence knows that I should die outright, after all my blameless
life, if reduced to those horrible straits you always picture. And I
have too much faith in a gracious Providence to conceive for one moment
that it would treat me so. I decline the subject. Why should we
make such troubles? There is clear soup for dinner, and some lovely
sweet-breads. Cook has got a new receipt for bread sauce, and Jordas
says that he never did shoot such a woodcock."

"Eliza, I trust that you may enjoy them all; your appetite is delicate,
and you require nourishment. Why, what do I see over yonder in the snow?
A slim figure moving at a very great pace, and avoiding the open places!
Are my eyes growing old, or is it Lancelot?"

"Pet out in such weather, Philippa! Such a thing is simply impossible.
Or at any rate I should hope so. You know that Jordas was obliged to put
a set of curtains from end to end even of the bowling-alley, which is
so beautifully sheltered; and even then poor Pet was sneezing. And you
should have heard what he said to me, when I was afraid of the sheets
taking fire from his warming-pan one night. Pet is unaccountable
sometimes, I know. But the very last thing imaginable of him is that he
should put his pretty feet into the snow."

"You know him best, Eliza; and it is very puzzling to distinguish things
in snow. But if it was not Pet, why, it must have been a squirrel."

"The squirrels are gone to sleep for the winter, Philippa. I dare say it
was only Jordas. Don't you think that it must have been Jordas?"

"I am quite certain that it was not Jordas. But I will not pretend to
say that it was not a squirrel. He may forego his habitudes more easily
than Lancelot."

"How horribly dry you are sometimes, Philippa. There seems to be no
softness in your nature. You are fit to do battle with fifty lawyers;
and I pity Mr. Jellicorse, with his best clothes on."

"You could commit no greater error. We pay the price of his black silk
stockings three times over, every time we see him. The true objects of
pity are--you, I, and the estates."

"Well, let us drop it for a while. If you begin upon that nauseous
subject, not a particle of food will pass my lips; and I did look