dress which
I never had seen before, into the very grandest one: 'would I lie on a
couch, brother John, do you think, unless good money was paid for it?
Because other people are clever, John, you need not grudge them their
earnings.'

'A couch!' I replied: 'why what can you want with a couch in the
day-time, Annie? A couch is a small bed, set up in a room without space
for a good four-poster. What can you want with a couch downstairs? I
never heard of such nonsense. And you ought to be in the dairy.'

'I won't cry, brother John, I won't; because you want to make me
cry'--and all the time she was crying--'you always were so nasty, John,
sometimes. Ah, you have no nobility of character, like my husband. And I
have not seen you for two months, John; and now you come to scold me!'

'You little darling,' I said, for Annie's tears always conquered me;
'if all the rest ill-use me, I will not quarrel with you, dear. You have
always been true to me; and I can forgive your vanity. Your things
are very pretty, dear; and you may couch ten times a day, without my
interference. No doubt your husband has paid for all this, with the
ponies he stole from Exmoor. Nobility of character is a thing beyond
my understanding; but when my sister loves a man, and he does well and
flourishes, who am I to find fault with him? Mother ought to see these
things: they would turn her head almost: look at the pimples on the
chairs!'

'They are nothing,' Annie answered, after kissing me for my kindness:
'they are only put in for the time indeed; and we are to have much
better, with gold all round the bindings, and double plush at the
corners; so soon as ever the King repays the debt he owes to my poor
Tom.'

I thought to myself that our present King had been most unlucky in one
thing--debts all over the kingdom. Not a man who had struck a blow for
the King, or for his poor father, or even said a good word for him,
in the time of his adversity, but expected at least a baronetcy, and
a grant of estates to support it. Many have called King Charles
ungrateful: and he may have been so. But some indulgence is due to
a man, with entries few on the credit side, and a terrible column of
debits.

'Have no fear for the chair,' I said, for it creaked under me very
fearfully, having legs not so large as my finger; 'if the chair breaks,
Annie, your fear should be, lest the tortoise-shell run into me. Why, it
is striped like a viper's loins! I saw some hundreds