remarked the old lady, looking on; 'and so you will.'

'Do what, Ma dear?'

'Break the pier-glass, or burst a blood-vessel.'

'Neither, please God, Ma dear. Here's wind, Ma. Look at this!'
In a concluding round of great severity, the Reverend Septimus
administered and escaped all sorts of punishment, and wound up by
getting the old lady's cap into Chancery--such is the technical
term used in scientific circles by the learned in the Noble Art--
with a lightness of touch that hardly stirred the lightest lavender
or cherry riband on it. Magnanimously releasing the defeated, just
in time to get his gloves into a drawer and feign to be looking out
of window in a contemplative state of mind when a servant entered,
the Reverend Septimus then gave place to the urn and other
preparations for breakfast. These completed, and the two alone
again, it was pleasant to see (or would have been, if there had
been any one to see it, which there never was), the old lady
standing to say the Lord's Prayer aloud, and her son, Minor Canon
nevertheless, standing with bent head to hear it, he being within
five years of forty: much as he had stood to hear the same words
from the same lips when he was within five months of four.

What is prettier than an old lady--except a young lady--when her
eyes are bright, when her figure is trim and compact, when her face
is cheerful and calm, when her dress is as the dress of a china
shepherdess: so dainty in its colours, so individually assorted to
herself, so neatly moulded on her? Nothing is prettier, thought
the good Minor Canon frequently, when taking his seat at table