"Didn't you what?" asked Susan, not in the most elegant English.

"Why, Martin Greville twitted us with having a girl for a governess,"
said Henry; "he said it was a shame we should be taken in to think
her grown up, when she was not twenty; and I said I would find out,
and now I have done it!" he cried triumphantly.

"Everybody is quite welcome to know my age," said Miss Fosbrook, the
colour rising in her cheek. "I was nineteen on the last of April;
but I had rather you had asked me point blank, Henry, than tried to
find out in a sidelong way."

Henry looked a little surly; and Elizabeth, a nice-looking girl, who
sat next to him and was nearest in age, said, "Oh! but that would
have been so rude, Miss Fosbrook."

"Rude, but honest," said Miss Fosbrook; and Susan's honest eyes
twinkled, as much as to say, "I like that;" but she said, "I don't
believe Hal meant it."

"I don't care!" said Sam. "Come, Mary, this plate is done--more
bread and butter; d'ye hear? not bread and gammon!" and he began the
chant, in which six voices joined till it became a roar, pursuing
Mary down to the lower regions:-


"Thick butter and thin bread,
Or it shall be thrown at Mary's head;
Thick bread and thin butter,