in the morning and go riding. I told him business could always be left
in Twickenham Town, and he laughed and said he wished he lived in a
town of that sort. I wish he did.

We stopped just a minute to speak to Mr. Bugg, who sells vegetables and
eggs and things, and whose wife has just had twins again, and this time
has a milk-leg also, and Father shook hands with him and asked about
the babies, I thinking just in time to tell him to do it, and then we
had some soda-water at Mrs. Grump's. It is the most awful soda-water
in the world, Mrs. Grump's is, but it is wet and cold, and you can sit
down when drinking it, and while we sat she touched up the town and
Father nearly fell out of his chair at the way she did it. If Mrs.
Grump were for sale, I'd sell everything I own to get enough to buy
her, for the way she can put into words what she thinks of human beings
would make a graven image come to life. She never smiles herself.

After we got through with Princess Street we turned in by Colonel
Rixby's and then went down by the Baconses' and into The Court, whose
trees were planted by order of some lordly person, kin to the Aikens
who have been sitting under the shade of their greatness ever since,
and then we strolled by the Eppes house, for I wanted Father to see it.
It is the stateliest old place in town and its garden of old-fashioned
flowers makes one think the twentieth century is a mistake and ought
never to have been, but ordinarily I pass it quickly, as I don't care
for its owners. The house has perfect lines and the dearest little
panes of glass in its deep, wide windows; and inside it has big
fireplaces and beautifully carved woodwork and wonderful old furniture
and fearful old portraits, and I certainly wanted Father to see
everything in it, but I didn't expect him to do it, for the House of
Eppes doesn't admire me any more than I admire it--and then the