master, or my young mistress, poring over one of
their spiders' insides with a magnifying-glass; or
you meet one of their frogs walking down-stairs
without his head; and when you wonder what
this cruel nastiness means, you are told that it
means a taste in my young master or my young
mistress for natural history. Sometimes, again,
you see them occupied for hours together in
spoiling a pretty flower with pointed instruments,
out of a stupid curiosity to know what
the flower is made of. Is its colour any
prettier, or its scent any sweeter, when you do
know? But there! the poor souls must get
through the time, you see—they must get
through the time. You dabbled in nasty mud,
and made pies, when you were a child; and
you dabble in nasty science, and dissect spiders,
and spoil flowers, when you grow up. In the
one case and in the other, the secret of it is,
that you have got nothing to think of in your
poor empty head, and nothing to do with your
poor idle hands. And so it ends in your spoiling
canvas with paints, and making a smell in
the house; or in keeping tadpoles in a glass
box full of dirty water, and turning everybody's
stomach in the house; or in chipping off
bits of stone here, there, and everywhere, and
dropping grit into all the victuals in the house;
or in staining your fingers in the pursuit of
photography, and doing justice without mercy on
everybody's face in the house. It often falls
heavy enough, no doubt, on people who are
really obliged to get their living, to be forced to
work for the clothes that cover them, the
roof that shelters them, and the food that keeps
them going. But compare the hardest day's
work you ever did with the idleness that splits
flowers, and pokes its way into spiders' stomachs,
and thank your stars that your head has got
something it must think of, and your hands
something that they must do.

As for Mr. Franklin and Miss Rachel, they
tortured nothing, I am glad to say. They
simply confined themselves to making a mess;
and all they spoilt, to do them justice, was the
panelling of a door.

Mr. Franklin's universal genius, dabbling in
everything, dabbled in what he called "decorative
painting." He had invented, he informed
us, a new mixture to moisten paint with, which
he described as a "vehicle." What it was
made of, I don't know. What it did, I can tell
you in two words: it stank. Miss Rachel being
wild to try her hand at the new process, Mr.
Franklin sent to London for the materials;
mixed them up, with accompaniment of a smell
which made the very dogs sneeze when they
came into the room; put an apron and a bib
over Miss Rachel's gown, and set her to work
decorating her own little sitting-room—called,
for want of English to name it in, her
"boudoir." They began with the inside of the
door. Mr. Franklin scraped off all the nice
varnish with pumice stone, and made what he
described as a surface to work on. Miss Rachel
then covered the surface, under his directions
and with his help, with patterns and devices—
griffins, birds, flowers, cupids, and such like,
copied from designs made by a famous Italian
painter, whose name escapes me—the one, I
mean, who stocked the world with Virgin
Marys, and had a sweetheart at the baker's.
Viewed as work, this decoration was slow to do,
and dirty to deal with. But our young lady and
gentleman never seemed to tire of it. When
they were not riding, or seeing company, or
taking their meals, or piping their songs, there
they were with their heads together, as busy as
bees, spoiling the door. Who was the poet
who said that Satan finds some mischief still
for idle hands to do? If he had occupied my
place in the family, and had seen Miss Rachel
with her brush, and Mr. Franklin with his
vehicle, he could have written nothing truer of
either of them than that.

The next date worthy of notice is Sunday,
the fourth of June.

On that evening, we, in the servants' hall,
debated a domestic question for the first time,
which, like the decoration of the door, has its
bearing on something that is still to come.

Seeing the pleasure which Mr. Franklin and
Miss Rachel took in each other's society, and
noting what a pretty match they were in all
personal respects, we naturally speculated on
the chance of their putting their heads together
with other objects in view besides the ornamenting
of a door. Some of us said there would be
a wedding in the house before the summer was
over. Others (led by me) admitted it was
likely enough Miss Rachel might be married;
but we doubted (for reasons which will presently
appear) whether her bridegroom, would be Mr.
Franklin Blake.

That Mr. Franklin was in love, on his side,
nobody who saw and heard him could doubt.
The difficulty was to fathom Miss Rachel. Let
me do myself the honour of making you
acquainted with her; after which, I will leave
you to fathom her yourself—if you can.

My young lady's eighteenth birthday was the
birthday now coming, on the twenty-first of
June. If you happen to like dark women (who,
I am informed, have gone out of fashion latterly
in the gay world), and if you have no particular
prejudice in favour of size, I answer for Miss
Rachel as one of the prettiest girls your eyes
ever looked on. She was small and slim, but
all in fine proportion from top to toe. To see
her sit down, to see her get up, and specially to
see her walk, was enough to satisfy any man in
his senses that the graces of her figure (if you
will pardon me the expression) were in her
flesh, and not in her clothes. Her hair was
the blackest I ever saw. Her eyes matched
her hair. Her nose was not quite large enough,
I admit. Her mouth and chin were (to quote
Mr. Franklin) morsels for the gods; and her
complexion (on the same undeniable authority)
was as warm as the sun itself, with this great
advantage over the sun, that it was always in
nice order to look at. Add to the foregoing,
that she carried her head as upright as a dart,