CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE RIDDLE BAFFLES ME!

"Your riddle is hard to read."-Tennyson.

"Are you content?

I am what you behold.

And that's a mystery."-The Two Foscari.

THE post next morning brought a letter from Mr. Vernor, to say that, as he found the business on which he was engaged must necessitate his crossing to Boulogne, he feared there was no chance of his being able to return under a week, but that, if it should be inconvenient for Mrs. Coleman to keep Miss Saville so long at Elm Lodge, he should wish her to go back to Barstone, where, if she was in any difficulty, she could easily apply to her late hostess for advice and assistance. On being brought clearly (though I fear the word is scarcely applicable to the good lady's state of mind at any time) to understand the position of affairs, Mrs. Coleman would by no means hear of Miss Saville's departure; but, on the contrary, made her promise to prolong her stay till her guardian should return, which, as Freddy observed, involved the remarkable coincidence, that if Mr. Vernor should be drowned in crossing the British channel, she (his mother) would have put her foot in it. The same post brought Freddy a summons from his father, desiring him, the moment he returned from Bury with the papers, to proceed to town immediately. There was nothing left for him, therefore, but to deposit himself upon the roof of the next coach, blue bag in hand, which he accordingly did, after having spent the intervening time in reviling all lawyers, clients, deeds, settlements, in fact, every individual thing connected with the profession, excepting fees.

"Clara and I are going for a long walk, Mr. Fairlegh, and we shall be glad of your escort, if you have no objection to accompany us, and it is not too far for you," said Mrs. Coleman, (who evidently considered me in the last stage of a decline,) trotting into the

breakfast-room, where I was lounging, book in hand, over the fire, wondering what possible pretext I could invent for joining the ladies.

"I shall be only too happy," answered I, "and I think I can contrive to walk as far as you can, Mrs. Coleman."

"Oh! I don't know that," was the reply, "I am a capital walker, I assure you. I remember a young man, quite as young as you, and a good deal stouter, who could not walk nearly as far as I can; to be sure," she added as she left the room, "he had a wooden leg, poor fellow!"

I soon received a summons to start with the ladies, whom I found awaiting my arrival on the terrace walk at the back of the house, comfortably wrapped up in shawls and furs, for, although a bright sun was shining, the day was cold and frosty.

"You must allow me to carry that for you," said I, laying violent hands on a large basket, between which and a muff Mrs. Coleman was in vain attempting to effect an amicable arrangement.

“Oh, dear! I'm sure you'll never be able to carry it—it's so dreadfully heavy," was the reply.

"Nous verrons," answered I, swinging it on my forefinger, in order to demonstrate its lightness.

"Take care, you musn't do so!" exclaimed Mrs. Coleman in a tone of extreme alarm; "you'll upset all my beautiful senna tea, and it will get amongst the slices of Christmas plum-pudding, and the flannel that I'm going to take for poor Mrs. Muddles's children to eat; do you know Mrs. Muddles, Clara, my dear ?”

Miss Saville replied in the negative, and Mrs. Coleman continued. "Ah! poor thing! she's a very hard-working, respectable, excellent young woman; she has been married three years, and has got six children,-no! let me see,—it's six years, and three children,—that's it,—though I can never remember whether it's most pigs or children she has,-four pigs did I say?—but it doesn't much signify, for the youngest is a boy and will soon be fat enough to kill the pig I mean, and they're all very dirty, and have never been taught to read, because she takes in washing, and has put a great deal too much starch into my nightcap this week-only her husband drinks-so I musn't say much about it, poor thing, for we all have our failings, you know."

With suchlike rambling discourse did worthy Mrs. Coleman beguile the way, until at length, after a walk of some two miles and a half, we arrived at the cottage of that much-enduring laundress,

the highly respectable Mrs. Muddles, where, in due form, we were introduced to the mixed race of children and pigs, between which heads clearer than that of Mrs. Coleman might have been at a loss to distinguish; for if the pigs did not exactly resemble children, the children most assuredly looked like pigs. Here we seemed likely to remain for some time, as there was much business to be transacted by the two matrons. First, Mrs. Coleman's basket was unpacked, during which process that lady delivered a long harangue, setting forth the rival merits of plum-pudding and black draught, and ingeniously establishing a connexion between them, which has rendered the former nearly as distasteful to me as the latter ever since. Thence glancing slightly at the overstarched nightcap, and delicately referring to the anti-teetotal propensities of the laundress's sposo, she contrived so thoroughly to confuse and interlace the various topics of her discourse, as to render it an open question, whether the male Muddles had not got tipsy on black draught, in consequence of the plum-pudding having overstarched the nightcap; moreover, she distinctly called the latter article "poor fellow!" twice. In reply to this, Mrs. Muddles, the skin of whose hands was crimped up into patterns like sea-weed, from the amphibious nature of her employment, and whose general appearance was, from the same cause, moist and spongy, expressed much gratitude for the contents of the basket, made a pathetic apology to the nightcap, tried to ignore the imbibing propensity of her better half; but, when pressed home upon the point, declared, that when he was not engaged in the Circe-like operation of "making a beast of hisself," he was one of the most virtuousest of men; and finally wound up by a minute medical detail of Johnny's chilblain, accompanied by a slight retrospective sketch of Mary Anne's departed hooping-cough. How much longer the conversation might have continued, it is impossible to say, for it was evident that neither of the speakers had by any means exhausted her budget, had not Johnny, the unfortunate proprietor of the chilblain above alluded to, seen fit to precipitate himself, head-foremost, into a washing-tub of nearly scalding water, whence his mamma, with great presence of mind and much professional dexterity, extricated him, wrung him out, and set him on the mangle to dry, where he remained sobbing, from a vague sense of humid misery, till a more convenient season.

This little incident reminding Mrs. Coleman that the boiled beef, preparing for our luncheon and the servant's dinner, would inevitably