plunged a hundred little points of sarcasm daily. As children
are sometimes brought before magistrates, and their poor little backs
and shoulders laid bare, covered with bruises and lashes which brutal
parents have inflicted, so, I dare say, if there had been any tribunal
or judge, before whom this poor patient lady's heart could have been
exposed, it would have been found scarred all over with numberless
ancient wounds, and bleeding from yesterday's castigation. Old Lady
Kew's tongue was a dreadful thong which made numbers of people wince.
She was not altogether cruel, but she knew the dexterity with which she
wielded her lash, and liked to exercise it. Poor Lady Julia was always
at hand, when her mother was minded to try her powers.

Lady Kew had just made herself comfortable at Brighton, when her little
grandson's illness brought Lady Anne Newcome and her family down to the
sea. Lady Kew was almost scared back to London again, or blown over the
water to Dieppe. She had never had the measles. "Why did not Anne carry
the child to some other place? Julia, you will on no account go and see
that little pestiferous swarm of Newcomes, unless you want to send me
out of the world--which I dare say you do, for I am a dreadful plague to
you, I know, and my death would be a release to you."

"You see Doctor H., who visits the child every day," cries poor
Pincushion; "you are not afraid when he comes."

"Doctor H.? Doctor H. comes to cure me, or to tell me the news, or to
flatter me, or to feel my pulse and to pretend to prescribe, or to take
his guinea; of course Dr. H. must go to see all sorts of people in all
sorts of diseases. You would not have me be such a brute as to order him
not to attend my own grandson? I forbid you to go to Anne's house. You
will send one of the men every day to inquire. Let the groom go--yes,
Charles--he will not go into the house. He will ring the bell and wait
outside. He had better ring the bell at the area--I suppose there is an
area--and speak to the servants through the bars, and bring us word how
Alfred is." Poor Pincushion felt fresh compunctions; she had met the
children, and kissed the baby, and held kind Ethel's hand in hers, that
day, as she was out in her chair. There was no use, however, to make
this confession. Is she the only good woman or man of whom domestic
tyranny has made a hypocrite?

Charles, the groom, brings back perfectly favourable reports of Master
Alfred's health that