the King! The nuns opened the whites of their eyes, and smiled regularly
in succession as the bright idea reached them and the abbess--a
good-looking soul, evidently of superior birth and breeding to the rest,
all gracious and courteous in demeanour to the strangers.

A thought struck me--or, as Mr. Barrett of Navan expressed it, "I took a
notion, ma'am"--that Fanny would look well in a nun's dress; and boldly
I went to work with my interpreter, who thought the request at first too
bold to make; but I forced it through to nun the first, who backed and
consulted nun the second, who at my instigation referred in the last
appeal to the abbess, who, in her supreme good-nature, smiled, and
pointed upstairs; and straight our two nuns carried Fanny and me off
with them up stairs and stairs, and through passages and passages, to a
little nun's room--I mean a nun's little room--nice with flowers and
scraps of relics and religious prints. The nuns ran to a press in the
wall, and took out ever so many plaited coifs and bands, and examined
them all carefully as birthnight beauty would have done, to fix upon one
which was most becoming. Nun the second ran for the rest of the
habiliments, and I the while disrobed Fanny of her worldly sprigged
cambric muslin and straw hat, which, by the bye, nun the second eyed
with a fond admiration which proved she had not quite forgotten this
world's conveniences. The eagerness with which they dressed Fanny, the
care with which they adjusted the frontlet, and tucked in the ringlets,
and placed the coif on her head, and pulled it down to exactly the right
becoming sit, was exceedingly amusing. No coquette dressing for Almack's
could have shown more fastidious nicety, or expressed more joy and
delight at the toilette's triumphant success. They exclaimed in German,
and lifted up hands and eyes in admiration of Fanny's beautiful
appearance in nun's attire. The universal language of action and the no
less universal language of flattery was not lost upon me: I really loved