he children rise, and
somewhere begins the indispensable cheer. The gentlemen take the lead.
'Three times three for Mr. Fulmort!' 'Three cheers for Sir John
Raymond!' 'Three for the Forest show!' Shouting and waving of hats will
never cease, the gentlemen are as crazy as the boys, and what will become
of the train?

Tumble them in--hoist up the girls while mankind is still vociferous.
What's all this, coming in at the omnibus windows? Stand back, child,
you don't want to be set down in London! Your nosegay, is it? Here are
the prize nosegays, prize potatoes, prize currants, prize everything
showering in on the Londoners to display or feast on at home. Many a
family will have a first taste of fresh country green meat to-morrow, of
such freshness, that is, as it may retain after eight hours of show and
five of train. But all is compared! How the little girls hug their
flowers. If any nosegays reach London alive, they will be cherished to
their last hour, and maybe the leaves will live in prayer-books for many
a year.

Poor little things! It has been to them apparently a rather weary and
oppressive pleasure, too strange for the most part to be thoroughly
enjoyed; but it will live in their memories for many a day, and as time
goes on, will clear itself from the bewilderment, till it become one of
the precious days that make gems on the thread of life.

Mervyn! Where has he been all this time? True, he once said he would
see nothing of it, and seems to have kept his word. He did not even
acknowledge the cheers for Mr. Fulmort.

Is not something visible behind the broad smooth bole of yonder beech
tree? Have Mervyn and Cecily been there all the time of the evening
service?

It is a remarkable fact, that though nobody has told anybody, every
person who is curious, and many who are not, know who is to be Mrs.
Fulmort of Beauchamp.

CHAPTER XXVII

When will you marry?
Say the bells of St. Mary.
When I get rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch.
When will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney.
I do not know,
Says the great bell of Bow.--_Nursery Rhyme_

There was some truth in Lucilla's view of herself and Honor as belonging
to two distinct classes of development. Honor had grown up among those
who fed on Scott, Wordsworth, and Fouque, took their theology from the
_British Critic_, and their taste from Pugin; and moulded their opinions
and practice on the past. Lucilla