e whose cloth is the best of
cloaking. A glance at Dudley Sowerby's defection, assures our worldly
wisdom too, that now is the time to sue.

Several times while Mr. Barmby made thus his pudding of the desires of
the flesh and the spirit, Skepsey's tales of Matilda Pridden's heroism
caught his attention. He liked her deeds; he disliked the position in
which the young woman placed herself to perform them; and he said so.
Women are to be women, he said.

Skepsey agreed: 'If we could get men to do the work, sir!'

Mr. Barmby was launching forth: Plenty of men!--His mouth was blocked by
the reflection, that we count the men on our fingers; often are we, as
it were, an episcopal thumb surveying scarce that number of followers!
He diverged to censure of the marchings and the street-singing: the
impediment to traffic, the annoyance to a finely musical ear.
He disapproved altogether of Matilda Pridden's military display,
pronouncing her to be, 'Doubtless a worthy young person.'

'Her age is twenty-seven,' said Skepsey, spying at the number of his
own.

'You have known her long?' Mr. Barmby asked.

'Not long, sir. She has gone through trouble. She believes very strongly
in the will:--If I will this, if I will that, and it is the right
will, not wickedness, it is done--as good as done; and force is quite
superfluous. In her sermons, she exhorts to prayer before action.'

'Preaches?'

'She moves a large assembly, sir.'

'It would seem, that England is becoming Americanized!' exclaimed
the Conservative in Mr. Barmby. Almost he groaned; and his gaze was
fish-like in vacancy, on hearing the little man speak of the present
intrepid forwardness of the sex to be publicly doing. It is for men the
most indigestible fact of our century: one that--by contrast throws an
overearthly holiness on our decorous dutiful mothers, who contentedly
worked below the surface while men unremittingly attended to their
interests above.

Skepsey drew forth a paper-covered shilling-book: a translation from the
French, under a yelling title of savage hate of Old England and cannibal
glee at her doom. Mr. Barmby dropped his eyelashes on it, without
comment; nor did he reply to Skepsey's forlorn remark: 'We let them
think they could do it!'

Behold the downs. Breakfast is behind them. Miss Radnor likewise: if the
poor child has a name. We propose to supply the deficiency. She does not
declare war upon tobacco. She has a cultured and a beautiful voi