ting there bolt
upright in a corner?'

'Only suppose,' returned Bella, 'that poor Pa was to sit bolt upright in
another corner.'

'My dear, he couldn't do it,' said Lavvy. 'Pa would loll directly. But
indeed I do not believe there ever was any human creature who could keep
so bolt upright as Ma, 'or put such an amount of aggravation into one
back! What's the matter, Ma? Ain't you well, Ma?'

'Doubtless I am very well,' returned Mrs Wilfer, turning her eyes upon
her youngest born, with scornful fortitude. 'What should be the matter
with Me?'

'You don't seem very brisk, Ma,' retorted Lavvy the bold.

'Brisk?' repeated her parent, 'Brisk? Whence the low expression,
Lavinia? If I am uncomplaining, if I am silently contented with my lot,
let that suffice for my family.'

'Well, Ma,' returned Lavvy, 'since you will force it out of me, I must
respectfully take leave to say that your family are no doubt under
the greatest obligations to you for having an annual toothache on your
wedding day, and that it's very disinterested in you, and an immense
blessing to them. Still, on the whole, it is possible to be too boastful
even of that boon.'

'You incarnation of sauciness,' said Mrs Wilfer, 'do you speak like that
to me? On this day, of all days in the year? Pray do you know what
would have become of you, if I had not bestowed my hand upon R. W., your
father, on this day?'

'No, Ma,' replied Lavvy, 'I really do not; and, with the greatest
respect for your abilities and information, I very much doubt if you do
either.'

Whether or no the sharp vigour of this sally on a weak point of Mrs
Wilfer's entrenchments might have routed that heroine for the time, is
rendered uncertain by the arrival of a flag of truce in the person of
Mr George Sampson: bidden to the feast as a friend of the family, whose
affections were now understood to be in course of transference from
Bella to Lavinia, and whom Lavinia kept--possibly in remembrance of his
bad taste in having overlooked her in the first instance--under a course
of stinging discipline.

'I congratulate you, Mrs Wilfer,' said Mr George Sampson, who had
meditated this neat address while coming along, 'on the day.' Mrs Wilfer
thanked him with a magnanimous sigh, and again became an unresisting
prey to that inscrutable toothache.

'I am surprised,' said Mr Sampson feebly, 'that Miss Bella condescends
to cook.'

Here Miss Lavinia descended on the ill-starred young gentleman wit