in surprise. "I was informed that he died five years ago at Paris."
I was horrified at the magnitude of this error he had made, for my aunt spoke, alas! too truly. I might have been spared my agitation, though.
"Oh!" Miss Prudence laughed, "my dear mamma hath taken another piece of household furniture unto herself since then."
"A what?" cries my aunt, fixing her glasses on again to cover her distress.
You will understand that the dowager—dear lady!—being the product of an earlier generation, construed this flippant mention of so ornamental an article as a papa as gross irreverence. Yet I breathed again at the lad's ingenuity. However, he had gone astray on another point, and my aunt was not the one to pass it by.
"But what are you doing in the north, my dear Miss Canticle, if I may make so bold as to inquire?" says she; "for I have always been told that your residences were Tunbridge Wells and Mitcham Green."
"You are not aware then, madam," replied Miss Prue, "that we bought quite recently a little place in Fifeshire?"
"Indeed!" says my aunt, with interest, "and a very charming country to be sure." Then she turned to me and said: "Barbara, I am come to speak to you of a particular affair. Captain Grantley has just had the goodness to inform me that he proposes shortly to have this house searched from
