my eyes, and that their effect would have been some degrees more
comical."

"For shame, Julius!" said Rosamond. "Don't you know that one
afternoon, when Nora had cried for forty minutes over her sum, she
declared that she wanted to make her eyes as beautiful as Mr.
Charnock's. Well, what was the effect?"

"Startling," said Raymond. "He came down in shades of every kind of
crimson and scarlet. A fearful object, with his pink-and-white face
glowing under it."

"And what I had to undergo from Susan!" added Julius. "She washed
me, and soaped me, and rubbed me, till I felt as if all the
threshing-machines in the county were about my head, lecturing me
all the time on the profanity of flying against Scripture by trying
to alter one's hair from what Providence had made it. Nothing would
do; her soap only turned it into shades of lemon and primrose. I
was fain to let her shave my head as if I had a brain fever; and I
was so horribly ashamed for years after, that I don't think I have
set foot in Long Street since till to-day."

"Pettitt is a queer little fellow," said Herbert. "The most
truculent little Radical to hear him talk, and yet staunch in his
votes, for he can't go against those whose hair he has cut off from
time immemorial."

"I hope he has not lost much," said Julius.

"His tenements are down, but they were insured; and as to his stock,
he says he owes its safety entirely to you, Julius. I think he
would present you with both his models as a testimonial, if you
could only take them," said Raymond.

Cecil had neither spoken nor laughed through all this. She was
nursing her wrath; and after marching out of the dining-room, lay in
wait to intercept her husband, and when she had claimed his
attention, began, "Rosamond ought not to be allowed to say such
things."

"What things?"

"Speaking in that improper way about a gown."

"She seems to have said what was the fact."

"It can't be! It is preposterous! I never heard it before."

"Nor I; but Bindon evidently is up in those matters."

"It was only to support Rosamond; and I am quite sure she said it
out of mere opposition to me. You ought to speak to Julius."

"About what?" said Raymond.

"Her laughing whenever I mention Dunstone, and tell them the proper
way of doing things."

"There may be different opinions about the proper way of doing
things." Then as she opened her eyes in wonder and rebuke, he
continued, in his elder-brotherly to