s scholar, and he could but teach me
that which he knew himself--he was not likely to instruct me in the
mysteries of washing lace-ruffles, or hemming cambric handkerchiefs, I
suppose."

"I admit the temptation of getting such a scholar, and have no doubt that
it made a weighty consideration on the tutor's part."

"Oh, if you begin to investigate Rashleigh's motives, my finger touches
my chin once more. I can only be frank where my own are inquired into.
But to resume--he has resigned the library in my favour, and never enters
without leave had and obtained; and so I have taken the liberty to make
it the place of deposit for some of my own goods and chattels, as you may
see by looking round you."

"I beg pardon, Miss Vernon, but I really see nothing around these walls
which I can distinguish as likely to claim you as mistress."

"That is, I suppose, because you neither see a shepherd or shepherdess
wrought in worsted, and handsomely framed in black ebony, or a stuffed
parrot,--or a breeding-cage, full of canary birds,--or a housewife-case,
broidered with tarnished silver,--or a toilet-table with a nest of
japanned boxes, with as many angles as Christmas minced-pies,--or a
broken-backed spinet,--or a lute with three strings,--or rock-work,--or
shell-work,--or needle-work, or work of any kind,--or a lap-dog with a
litter of blind puppies--None of these treasures do I possess," she
continued, after a pause, in order to recover the breath she had lost in
enumerating them--"But there stands the sword of my ancestor Sir Richard
Vernon, slain at Shrewsbury, and sorely slandered by a sad fellow called
Will Shakspeare, whose Lancastrian partialities, and a certain knack at
embodying them, has turned history upside down, or rather inside
out;--and by that redoubted weapon hangs the mail of the still older
Vernon, squire to the Black Prince, whose fate is the reverse of his
descendant's, since he is more indebted to the bard who took the trouble
to celebrate him, for good-will than for talents,--

Amiddes the route you may discern one
Brave knight, with pipes on shield, ycleped Vernon
Like a borne fiend along the plain he thundered,
Prest to be carving throtes, while others plundered.

"Then there is a model of a new martingale, which I invented myself--a
great improvement on the Duke of Newcastle's; and there are the hood and
bells of my falcon Cheviot, who spitted himse