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he fully expected this threat to be followed by consequences; and Miss Somerville, had she witnessed this, the habitual behaviour of a father in the midst of his grownup family, would no longer have wondered at his son's ideas of propriety were not very refined.

At supper, Mr. Birkit renewed the attack upon his wife; the wildfowl was overdone, and the neck of venison not near so well dressed as at squire Meadows's; and what upon earth was she good for, if it was not to dress venison? Then reverting to another subject of displeasure-" I hear, madam," he said, sternly knitting his brow," that Isabel appeared at lord Lulworth's in a set of your ornaments. I questioned Jenny the maid who dressed her."

To what meannesses will not tyrants descend!

"I acknowledge it, my dear," replied Mrs. Birkit, in a trembling voice; “but, as the girls have scarcely any,

and your

goodness

goodness has supplied me with more ornaments than I want, I could see no possible harm in-"

"You could see!" retorted Mr. Birkit, contemptuously; "who ever said that you had either eyes, ears, or understanding? I think it was sufficient that I saw harm in it-aye, and positively forbade your lending from yourself any article of jewellery that I, in my bounty, had been pleased to bestow upon you! This venison is execrable! Let us have in the cockles!"

A dish of black cockles was brought in --a sort of food which was sometimes a favourite with the squire; but on this occa sion there was something in the boiling which displeased him, and for which Mrs. Birkit in vain endeavoured to apologize.

"I tell you, madam," he repeated, "it is an atrocious thing; I can never get a dish of black cockles to my mind; and for what do I feed and clothe and shelter you and that old woman," meaning lady Pen I 2

mawr,

mawr,

"if it is not to boil black cockles for my supper?"

Mrs. Birkit sighed at this brief exposition of the whole duty of a wife and mother-in-law; and the squire, turning his back upon her, called for his nightcap, and the last number of The Examiner.

In former days Mrs. Birkit had what is indulgently termed "a spirit of her own;" and had she been matched to a man of more gentleness, might, perhaps, now have been acting the tyrant's part, instead of suffering from it; but Mr. Birkit, of Bear Hall, had fairly obtained the mastery, and petrified a vixen to a drudge. All her time was taken up either with studying how to vary the elegances of his table, or making pastry for "the gentlemen of the hunt."

The hunting season was notwithstanding a period of gala to Mrs. Birkit, as her husband's companions, though rude, were not so rude as he; and the hours they

spent

spent at her house were almost the only ones in which she heard the accents of civility from any human being. The fastidiousness of her husband's taste could only be equalled by the narrowness of his mind; so that he denied her those supplies, and that assistance, suited to her rank in life, at the same time that he insisted his establishment should boast an air of plenty and elegance. The same narrowness made it death to him to part with the necessary sum for the education of his boys; he rather suffered them to run about the house, and pick up what knowledge their eldest sister could impart to them; while he affected to growl at her newfangled methods of teaching.

Poor Charity indeed had set about the task with more zeal than discretion. An enthusiast to the new ideas, it was her firm belief, that the human mind was equally capable of grasping every acquirement; though, in her own case, her study of botany went little farther than arranging

I 3

They

ging the flowers on the mantlepiece-or of history, than the tittle-tattle of the town; her zoology terminated in combing the lapdog-her chemistry, in making teaher architecture, in building castles in the air-and her mathematics, in cutting watch-papers. Still she was determined, with the aid of every help invented for infant minds, to make her little brothers and sisters prodigious geniuses. were furnished with catechisms, and ladders, and short cuts to learning, without end-their tongues were much exercised, and their minds little-they knew the name of every thing, and the nature of none; already one was, in his own opinion, an astronomer, another an herbalist, and a third an experimental philosopher. All were very superficial and very conceited.

Isabel, or Belinda, as we have already hinted, was too much occupied with a passion of her own, to second her sister's endeavours. This was for a young West Indian,

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