squire's lady;" Mrs. Hazeldean said, "Mrs. Dale was the last person in
the world who ought to have been a parson's wife." Carry, when she spoke
of Harry to a third person, said, "Dear Mrs. Hazeldean;" Harry, when she
referred incidentally to Carry, said, "Poor Mrs. Dale." And now the
reader knows why Mrs. Hazeldean called Mrs. Dale "poor,"--at least as
well as I do. For, after all, the word belonged to that class in the
female vocabulary which may be called "obscure significants," resembling
the Konx Ompax, which hath so puzzled the inquirers into the Eleusinian
Mysteries: the application is rather to be illustrated than the meaning
to be exactly explained.

"That's really a sweet little dog of yours, Jemima," said Mrs. Dale, who
was embroidering the word CAROLINE on the border of a cambric pocket
handkerchief; but edging a little farther off, as she added, "he'll not
bite, will he?"

"Dear me, no!" said Miss Jemima; "but" (she added in a confidential
whisper) "don't say he,--'t is a lady dog!"

"Oh," said Mrs. Dale, edging off still farther, as if that confession of
the creature's sex did not serve to allay her apprehensions,--"oh, then,
you carry your aversion to the gentlemen even to lap-dogs,--that is being
consistent indeed, Jemima!"

MISS JEMIMA.--"I had a gentleman dog once,--a pug!--pugs are getting very
scarce now. I thought he was so fond of me--he snapped at every one
else; the battles I fought for him! Well, will you believe--I had been
staying with my friend Miss Smilecox at Cheltenham. Knowing that William
is so hasty, and his boots are so thick, I trembled to think what a kick
might do. So, on coming here I left Bluff--that was his name--with Miss