r new resources."

"So it appears, Stanley," said Sir John, "when I look at your little
group of girls, recluses as they are called. How many cheap, yet lively
pleasures do they enjoy! their successive occupations, their books,
their animating exercise, their charitable rounds, their ardent
friendships; the social table, at which the elder ones are companions,
not mutes; the ever-varying pleasures of their garden,

"Increasing virtue, and approving heaven."

While we were sitting with Lady Aston, on whom we next called, Mr.
Stanley suddenly exclaimed, "The Misses Flam are coming up the gravel
walk." Lady Aston looked vexed, but correcting herself said, "Mr.
Stanley, we owe this visit to you, or rather to your friend," bowing to
me; "they saw your carriage stop here, or they would not have done so
dull a thing as to have called on me."

These new guests presented a new scene, very uncongenial to the timid
and tranquil spirit of the amiable hostess. There seemed to be a contest
between the sisters, who should be most eloquent, most loud, or most
inquisitive. They eagerly attacked me all at once, as supposing me to be
overflowing with intelligence from the metropolis, a place which they
not only believed to contain exclusively all that was worth seeing, but
all that was worth hearing. The rest of the world they considered as a
barren wilderness, of which the hungry inhabitants could only be kept
from starving, by such meagre aliment as the occasional reports of its
pleasures, fashions, and anecdotes, which might now and then be conveyed
by some stray traveler, might furnish.

"It is so strange to us," said Miss Bell, "and so monstrously dull and
vulgar, to be in the country at this time of the year, that we don't
know what to do with ourselves."

"As to the time of year, madam," said I, "if ever one would wish to be
in the country at all, surely this month is the point of perfection. The
only immoral thing with which I could ever charge our excellent
sovereign is, that he was born in June, and has thus furnished his
fashionable subjects with a loyal pretense for encountering 'the sin and
sea-coal of London,' to borrow Will Honeycomb's phrase, in the finest
month of the twelve. But where that is the real motive with one, it is
the pretense of a thousand."

"How can you be so shocking?" said she. "But papa is really grown so
cross and stingy, as to prevent our going to town at all these last two
or three years; a