remove herself into the verandah, and try to attract Leoline and
Hubert after her, but failing in this, she talked to the far more
conversible Rose about the bullfinch that hung at the window, which
loved no one but Aunt Ermine, and scolded and pecked at every one
else; and Augustus, the beloved tame toad, that lived in a hole under
a tree in the garden. Mrs. Curtis, considerate and tender-hearted,
startled to find her daughter in the field, and wishing her niece to
begin about her own affairs, talked common-place by way of filling up
the time, and Rachel had her eyes free for a range of the apartment.
The foundation was the dull, third-rate lodging-house, the
superstructure told of other scenes. One end of the room was almost
filled by the frameless portrait of a dignified clergyman, who would
have had far more justice done to him by greater distance; a
beautifully-painted miniature of a lady with short waist and small
crisp curls, was the centre of a system of photographs over the
mantel-piece; a large crayon sketch showed three sisters between the
ages of six and sixteen, sentimentalizing over a flower-basket; a
pair of water-colour drawings represented a handsome church and
comfortable parsonage; and the domestic gallery was completed by two
prints--one of a middle-aged county-member, the other one of Chalon's
ladylike matrons in watered-silk aprons. With some difficulty Rachel
read on the one the autograph, J. T. Beauchamp, and on the other the
inscription, the Lady Alison Beauchamp. The table-cover was of
tasteful silk patchwork, the vase in the centre was of red
earthenware, but was encircled with real ivy leaves gummed on in
their freshness, and was filled with wild flowers; books filled every
corner; and Rachel felt herself out of the much-loathed region of
common-place, but she could not recover from her surprise at the
audacity of such an independent measure on the part of her cousin;
and under cover of her mother's civil talk, said to Fanny, "I never