polished Luxulyan granite--the same that was used for the famous Duke
of Wellington's coffin in St. Paul's Cathedral.

Miss Susan Lefanu is eighty-five; Miss Charlotte has just passed
seventy-six. They are extremely small, and Miss Bunce looks after
them. That is to say, she dresses them of a morning, arranges their
chestnut "fronts," sets their caps straight, and takes them down to
breakfast. After dinner (which happens in the middle of the day) she
dresses them again and conducts them for a short walk along the
Rope-walk, which they call "the Esplanade." In the evening she
brings out the Bible and sets it the right way up for Miss Susan, who
begins to meditate on her decease; then sits down to a game of ecarte
with Miss Charlotte, who as yet has not turned her thoughts upon
mortality. At ten she puts them to bed. Afterwards, "the good Bunce
"--who is fifty, looks like a grenadier, and wears a large mole on
her chin--takes up a French novel, fastened by a piece of elastic
between the covers of Baxter's "Saint's Rest," and reads for an hour
before retiring. Her pay is fifty-two pounds a year, and her
attachment to the Misses Lefanu a matter of inference rather than
perception.


One morning in last May, at nine o'clock, when Miss Bunce had just
arranged the pair in front of their breakfast-plates, and was sitting
down to pour out the tea, two singers came down the street, and their
voices--a man's and a woman's--though not young, accorded very
prettily:--

"Citizens, toss your pens away!
For all the world is mad to-day--