ensive to us of the middle class than to hear the names of great
folks constantly introduced into conversation.

So Clive was silent and ate no dinner, to the alarm of Martha, who had
put him to bed many a time, and always had a maternal eye over him. When
he actually refused currant and raspberry tart, and custard, the chef
d'oeuvre of Miss Honeyman, for which she had seen him absolutely cry in
his childhood, the good Martha was alarmed.

"Law, Master Clive!" she said, "do 'ee eat some. Missis made it, you
know she did;" and she insisted on bringing back the tart to him.

Lady Anne and Ethel laughed at this eagerness on the worthy old woman's
part. "Do 'ee eat some, Clive," says Ethel, imitating honest Mrs. Hicks,
who had left the room.

"It's doosid good," remarked Lord Farintosh.

"Then do 'ee eat some more," said Miss Newcome: on which the young
nobleman, holding out his plate, observed with much affability, that the
cook of the lodgings was really a stunner for tarts.

"The cook! dear me, it's not the cook!" cries Miss Ethel. "Don't you
remember the princess in the Arabian Nights, who was such a stunner for
tarts, Lord Farintosh?"

Lord Farintosh couldn't say that he did.

"Well, I thought not; but there was a princess in Arabia or China, or
somewhere, who made such delicious tarts and custards that nobody's
could compare with them; and there is an old lady in Brighton who has
the same wonderful talent. She is the mistress of this house."

"And she is my aunt, at your lordship's service," said Mr. Clive, with
great dignity.

"Upon my honour! did you make 'em, Lady Anne?" asked my lord.

"The Queen of Hearts made tarts!" cried out Miss Newcome, rather
eagerly, and blushing somewhat.

"My good old aunt, Miss Honeyman, made this one," Clive would go on to
say.

"Mr. Honeyman's sister, the preacher, you know, where we go on Sunday,"
Miss Ethel interposed.

"The Honeyman pedigree is not a matter of very great importance," Lady
Anne remarked gently. "Kuhn, will you have the goodness to take away
these things? When did you hear of Colonel Newcome, Clive?"

An air of deep bewilderment and perplexity had spread over Lord
Farintosh's fine countenance whilst this talk about pastry had been
going on. The Arabian Princess, the Queen of Hearts making tarts,
Miss Honeyman? Who the deuce were all these? Such may have been his
lordship's doubts and queries. Whatever his cogitations were he did not
give utterance