indecorum, and
rendered natural and proper.

Flora wished that she had been an artist, to copy some of the fine forms
she saw among these fish-girls--forms which had been left as the great
God of nature made them, uncrippled by torturing stays and tight
vestments. How easy their carriage! with what rude grace they poised
upon their heads their ponderous baskets, and walked erect and firm,
filling the air with their mournfully-musical cry! The great resemblance
between these people and the Bavarian broom-girls, both in features and
costume, impressed her with the idea, that they had originally belonged
to the same race. The Newhaven sea-nymph, however, is taller, and has a
more imposing presence, than the short, snub-nosed Bavarian.

But time, that waits on no one's fancy or caprice, warned her that she
must not linger over a scene which she afterwards visited with renewed
pleasure, but gave her a gentle hint, that there was work to be done at
home--that she had better make her purchases and proceed to business.

She returned, therefore, to her lodgings in high spirits, despatching
Jim to the greengrocer's in the next street, and then followed Hannah
and her basket into Mrs. Waddel's kitchen.

"Marcy me! what ha' ye got, the noo?" said Mistress Waddel, lifting the
napkin from the basket: "meat enough, I declare, to last the hale week.
The weather's owr hot, I'm thinkin', for a' they to keep sweet sae
lang."

"Mrs. Waddel, I expect two gentlemen to dinner, particular friends of
Mr. Lyndsay; and I want you to cook these things for me as well as you
can," said Flora coaxingly.

"Twa' gentlemen, did ye say?--There's ten times mair in yon basket than
twa gentlemen can eat!"

"Of course there is; but we cannot stint our guests."

"Whist, woman!" cried Mrs. Waddel, "it makes my heid ache only to think
about a' that roast an' boil, an' boil an' roast!"

"Pray, how did you contrive to cook for Lady Weyms?" asked Flora, rather
indignantly.

"Gudeness gracious! Do ye think, that my Leddy Weyms cared for the
cooking o' the like o' me? When his late majestie, God bless him,
honoured our auld toon wi' his preesence, folk were glad to get a
deecent place to cover their heids, an' war in no wise owr particlar,
sae they could get lodged ava."

"So I should think, when a titled lady put up with such as these; where
the mistress engages to cook for her lodgers, and has not a whole pot in
her culinary establishment."

"My Le