"Excellent!" cried his wife, "you have your lesson perfectly: and, as our cook really makes better jellies than I meet with any where else, I will undertake to provide a sufficiency of them. We can also manage to roast fowls and boil tongues when Lady Anne sends them in; dear heart! it is no joke to feed fifty or sixty people, at one o'clock in the morning."
"Now I call the eating nothing," said Mr. Palmer, "but the wine makes a great hole in a lady's stock: she finds a single evening take 'at one fell swoop' what would have rendered her comfortable for a twelvemonth."
Lady Anne sighed, as she said, "I must do as well as I can. I think sherry is more drank than any thing now-a-days, and I have a little of that—some Bucellas, too, which I got for the children. Unfortunately, I parted with my wine at Granard Park to the heir—I thought I should never want wine then."
Mr. Palmer had known what it was to lose life's dearest connexion; and the soft cadence with which Lady Anne alluded to her feelings as a widow awakened all the sympathy of his generous nature, and he eagerly cried out,
"You will do very well, my lady, very well indeed. I will send you in a couple of dozen of capital sherry, fit for the dons, and some hermitage, by no means to be sneezed at; any thing will do for dancing misses and masters; but, in every party, there are some people who know what's what."
