meal, and, although they ate and drank but little, it was often prolonged to close upon the time for retiring to rest. It was the only season throughout the weary monotonous day when they were alone, and at their ease. They were free from the constraint of keeping on their countenance that expression of simulated gravity, not to say severity, which all those whose vocation it is to educate youth, whether male or female, think it their bounden duty to assume while occupying the rostrum of pedagogic authority. This is why schoolmasters and schoolmistresses get prematurely worn, wrinkled, and shrunken.

Supper-time, then, was an hour of unmingled delectation for the Bunnycastle family. Then, they were free from the heated and half-stifling atmosphere of the schoolrooms; for ventilation, as an adjunct to education, had not been thought of in 1836. Then, they were quit of the brawling exasperating swarm of youngsters, the scarcely less tiresome elder girls, and the exacting parlourboarders, who, because their parents paid fifty guineas per annum for their maintenance at Rhododendron House, deemed it a prime article in their creed to hold, in secret, if not openly, Mrs.

and the Miss Bunnycastles as the dust beneath their feet. At supper-time, the schoolmistress and her daughters were relieved from the presence of these superb ones of the earth in short skirts and frilled trousers. At supper-time, they were rid, too, of the teachers: amiable and worthy young persons all of them, no doubt, but wearisome on daily and unremitting acquaintance. At suppertime, they could chat without let or hindrance. They could run over the occurrences of the day. They could dwell, now with satisfaction, now with discontent, upon how much their young charges paid, and how much they ate. They could concoct letters of thanks to complimentary parents, or of deprecation to remonstrant ones. They could revolve plans of scholastic aggrandisement, discuss points of discipline, compare methods of instruction, grumble at their lot in that luxuriousness of complaint which is well-nigh akin to content, and gossip about their neighbours. Thus, supper in the little back parlour at Rhododendron House, combined the gravity of a cabinet council with the hilarity of a symposium.

CHAPTER V.

THE BUNNYCASTLES IN COUNCIL.

THE back parlour at Rhododendron House, dedicated to the nocturnal meal spoken of in the preceding chapter, was a very moderately-sized apartment. Indeed, if an observer of its dimensions had hazarded an opinion that there wasn't room to swing a cat in it, the remark, although coarse (and, as such, naturally intolerable in an establishment so genteel as Rhododendron House), would not have fallen very far short of the truth. This is intended to be a candid history; so I will at once confess that the back parlour was—well, what shall I say?-poky. A pair of folding-doors took up very nearly one of its sides, and these gave ad

mittance to the front parlour, or drawing-room, or state saloon, which was furnished in a style of classic but frigid splendour, and where parents, guardians, and other visitors, to whom the Bunnycastles desired to show ceremonial honour, were received. No pupil dared to enter that sacred apartment without permission. Many, indeed, never saw it from the day when they arrived at school, and were regaled with the sacrificial cake and wine (both of British manufacture), to the day when their friends came to fetch them away. Even the Bunny castles were chary about intruding on their Sala Regia, save on festive or solemn occasions. The back parlour was essentially their keeping and sitting chamber-their bower and their home.

The late Mr. Bunnycastle's portrait hung on one side of the modest pier-glass on the mantel, and an effigy-a very vile one-in crayons, of Mrs. Bunnycastle, flanked it. Opposite, was a small cottage piano; and you will see, by-and-by, that Rhododendron House was famous for its specimens of modern improvements on the harpsichord and the spinet. The window-curtains were of a dull decorous moreen; the carpets of a faded

crimson. The table had a cloth in imitation needlework, like a school-girl's sampler of unwonted size taken out of its frame. The chairs were of well-worn green leather. In a recess were three handsome mahogany desks and three rosewood workboxes, respectively pertaining to the three sisters Bunnycastle. Mrs. B.'s great black leather writing-case, where she kept her school register, and her account-books, and her valuables, had an occasional table to itself; and when I have added to the pictorial embellishments of the room, an agreeable although somewhat faded engraving of Pharaoh's Daughter finding the Infant Moses in the Bulrushes, and when I have remarked that on each side of the window hung a cage containing a canary, both of which were unceasingly watched by a grey cat of sly and jesuitical mien, I may be absolved from further performance of my favourite but unpopular part of the broker's man.

It was the same summer evening-the evening of the day of the flower-show at Chiswick, and of Griffin Blunt's rendezvous with the plasterer's wife at the sign of the Goat. The hour was half-past nine, and the Bunnycastles were sitting down to supper. Pepper, the maid, a demure person far