wickedness is as great as is your wit. But you really must think a trifle more about your pious character, my dear Miss Canticle."
Now that my aunt was apprised of Miss Prue's presence in the house, it behoved us to wear bold faces and put our trust in impudence and the good luck that usually attends it. She must be presented to the Earl, and share our daily life entirely. She must be treated as an equal, and carry herself with sustained dignity and ease; she must be nothing less than perfect in the playing of her part, else questions would be provoked, any one of which might prove fatal to our scheme. Therefore, I occupied the interval between this and a quarter after four, at which hour I was due at the tea-table in the dowager's drawing-room, in schooling Prue in carriage, etiquette, and family affairs. And I cannot repeat too often that if this lad was not by birth and training a person of the mode, his natural instinct for mummery was in itself so admirably fine that had he been asked to don the royal purple of a potentate, he would have filled the throne at a moment's notice and have looked a king and acted like one. Besides, he had this very great advantage—he had been bred to no sphere in particular, and there seemed such a native richness in his character as made him ripe for any. The keenest observation of man and nature supplied in him a course of education in the schools. Therefore his mind had no predisposition towards any avocation. He was neither a physician nor a priest, a fop nor a vender
