full-blown auriculas. "And not one of them
my dear," quoth Aunt Bella, "dared, for the
life of her, sit down in her mother's presence
without special permission, however her poor
young legs might ache with standing."

Then there was the delightful story of the
tea-party at Mrs. Betty Deering's, a quondam
schoolfellow and friend of Aunt Bella's, where
she had had the honour of contemplating
Doctor Johnson at feeding time. "All the
women my dear," she would say, "ran mad
about the great Dr. Johnson in those days.  He
was as much the fashion as mode silk and point
ruffles, though for my part I declare I found
him vastly unmannered and loutish the only
time I ever was in his company. For though
poor Mrs. Betty had asked a choice little party
of ladies to meet him, and though she spent the
best part of two days in her pastry-closet, rolling
out the cakes and whipping raspberry creams to
please his palate, he never gave her so much as a
civil word for all her pains, but sat glowering
and sulking and supping up dish after dish of tea
as fast as she could serve him with them, till
I thought he looked more like Burly Bruin
in the story book, gobbling down the hot
porridge, than a book-writing human Doctor. And
all the ladies sat round the table, nervously
smoothing down their laced aprons or playing
with their fans, not daring even to whisper to
one another, much less venture on a remark
to the great man, not even clever Miss Letitia,
Mrs. Betty's youngest sister, who I know had
been hard at her books for a week before, that
she might distinguish herself in conversing with
him.

"At last, my dear, when tea was nearly over,
and the Great Doctor had eaten and drunk more
than half the dainties on the table, poor Mrs.
Betty contrived to pluck up a spirit, and made
a bold effort to get one little word of praise in
return for all her trouble, by asking him very
modestly whether he approved of the cheese-
cakes I am quite sure he had swallowed half a
dozen of them at least for they were made by
her own hands from a famous receipt of her
grandmother's. But instead of the pleasant
word the poor soul was weak enough to look
for, Bruin turned upon her as sharply as could
be, with a snap and a growl.

"'Madam,' says he, 'if your cook had had
the making of them, she would have done more
justice to your grandmother's recipe!'

"What a flutter it put us all in, especially poor
vapourish Mrs. Betty; and how glad we were
when the Great Doctor rolled himself surlily out
of the parlour before the tea-things were
removed. It was like having a nightmare taken
off all our hearts, and we grew quite sociable and
merry, after Mrs. Betty had swallowed a double
dose of her drops to get over the disappointment.
I remember we talked about the new
French dances, which were thought so charming,
and which I had never seen. I know we
talked of them that evening, because when we
were all standing up to take leave, old Mrs. Di
Vavasour, who had been a beauty and a great
toast fifty years before, and who had just been
describing to us the fine birthnight parties she
had shone at in her teens, insisted upon giving
us a few steps as a sample of what she called
the passy-pied, which was a favourite dance in
her days, though I don't believe she had the
name of it quite right. And so with her hood
on, and her gown tucked up for walking home,
brisk Mrs. Di went tripping about to show us
the figure, till her stout quilted petticoat, being
unused to such gay doings, broke loose and
fell about her heels, and so put an end to her
dancing."

Sometimes, but only when she was quite sure
of godpapa* not being at hand to hear her,
Aunt Bella would indulge me with a song, or at
least a scrap of one, in a small treble, cracked
and weak, but perfectly in tune, and not without
some taste and feeling in the using. Her
ear was admirably correct, and she had once
learned to play a little on the harpsichord:
enough to "pick out" the store of tunes she
knew, which had been a great pleasure to her
in a quiet way, "But when I married, dear,"
said she, one day, "Captain Vance" she never
spoke of him familiarly as Roger, but somehow
the formal surname never sounded cold or
formal in her mouth "Captain Vance could not
endure to see my brown paws fumbling over the
keys, and old Mrs. Vance detested music, even
if it was good, so I soon left off playing, and,
indeed, I should never have made anything of
music, though I love to listen to it dearly."

* See page 323 of the present volume.

Of all Aunt Bella's ditties I think my favourite
was a fragment of a ballad tacked to a sort of
rub-a-dub monotonous tune, and ending with
the refrain of "I shan't get to sleep to night!"
But what the rest of it was about, I have long
utterly forgotten, except that there was something
about "snakes" and "fire" in it, which
gave the whole composition a smack of diablerie,
greatly to my fancy.

Then there was the well-known song from
the Beggar's Opera, which so often does duty
now in modern ball-rooms, as a dance tune. I
learned it first from dear Aunt Bella's lips, and
were I to try to sing it now, in a voice scarcely
less quavering than hers was then, I should
surely catch myself adorning the tune with the
little old-fashioned trill and shake of the head,
with which she always accompanied a certain
high note long drawn out with coquettish
emphasis towards the close of the strain.

She had an outlandish song too, with what
she called Polish words, of which I fancy she
understood as little as I did, and perhaps, after
all, they were mere gibberish, but Aunt Bella
believed in their genuineness, for she had learned
them from a schoolfellow who was the child of
a Russian merchant. The tune was quaint and
barbarous enough I am sure to have been
Chinese, and each verse ended with the words,
"To mi dola, To mi dola," and then, in a little
bird-twitter, "pree, pree, pree, pree, pree!"
with which the song died out.