hem, with a display of tea-things that might have warmed
the heart of a china-shop; and little Jacob and the baby in such a
state of perfection that their clothes looked as good as new, though
Heaven knows they were old enough! Didn't she say before they had sat
down five minutes that Barbara's mother was exactly the sort of lady
she expected, and didn't Barbara's mother say that Kit's mother was the
very picture of what she had expected, and didn't Kit's mother
compliment Barbara's mother on Barbara, and didn't Barbara's mother
compliment Kit's mother on Kit, and wasn't Barbara herself quite
fascinated with little Jacob, and did ever a child show off when he was
wanted, as that child did, or make such friends as he made!

'And we are both widows too!' said Barbara's mother. 'We must have
been made to know each other.'

'I haven't a doubt about it,' returned Mrs Nubbles. 'And what a pity
it is we didn't know each other sooner.'

'But then, you know, it's such a pleasure,' said Barbara's mother, 'to
have it brought about by one's son and daughter, that it's fully made
up for. Now, an't it?'

To this, Kit's mother yielded her full assent, and tracing things back
from effects to causes, they naturally reverted to their deceased
husbands, respecting whose lives, deaths, and burials, they compared
notes, and discovered sundry circumstances that tallied with wonderful
exactness; such as Barbara's father having been exactly four years and
ten months older than Kit's father, and one of them having died on a
Wednesday and the other on a Thursday, and both of them having been of
a very fine make and remarkably good-looking, with other extraordinary
coincidences. These recollections being of a kind calculated to cast a
shadow on the brightness of the holiday, Kit diverted the conversation
to general topics, and they were soon in great force again, and as
merry as before. Among other things, Kit told them about his old
place, and the extraordinary beauty of Nell (of whom he had talked to
Barbara a thousand times already); but the last-named circumstance
failed to interest his hearers to anything like the extent he had
supposed, and even his mother said (looking accidentally at Barbara at
the same time) that there was no doubt Miss Nell was very pretty, but
she was but a child after all, and there were many young women quite as
pretty as she; and Barbara mildly observed that she should think so,
and that she never could he