CHAPTER IV.

JUDY'S VISIT.


The very first morning after the expiry of the fortnight, when I was in
the kitchen with Sarah, giving her instructions about a certain dish as
if I had made it twenty times, whereas I had only just learned how from a
shilling cookery-book, there came a double knock at the door. I guessed who
it must be.

"Run, Sarah," I said, "and show Mrs. Morley into the drawing-room."

When I entered, there she was,--Mrs. Morley, _alias_ Cousin Judy.

"Well, little cozzie!" she cried, as she kissed me three or four times,
"I'm glad to see you gone the way of womankind,--wooed and married and a'!
Fate, child! inscrutable fate!" and she kissed me again.

She always calls me little coz, though I am a head taller than herself.
She is as good as ever, quite as brusque, and at the first word apparently
more overbearing. But she is as ready to listen to reason as ever was woman
of my acquaintance; and I think the form of her speech is but a somewhat
distorted reflex of her perfect honesty. After a little trifling talk,
which is sure to come first when people are more than ordinarily glad to
meet, I asked after her children. I forget how many there were of them, but
they were then pretty far into the plural number.