the children of dear good King William the
Fourth. Fitz-Adam!—it was a pretty name;
and she thought it very probably meant
' Child of Adam.' No one, who had not
some good blood in their veins, would dare to
be called Fitz; there was a deal in a name—
she had had a cousin who spelt his name with
two little ffs—ffoulkes, and he always looked
down upon capital letters, and said they
belonged to lately invented families. She
had been afraid he would die a bachelor, he
was so very choice. When he met with a
Mrs. ffaringdon, at a watering-place, he took
to her immediately; and a very pretty genteel
woman she was—a widow with a very good
fortune—and ' my cousin,' Mr. ffoulkes,
married her; and it was all owing to her two
little ffs."

Mrs. Fitz-Adam did not stand a chance of
meeting with a Mr. Fitz-anything in Cranford,
so that could not have been her motive for
settling there. Miss Matey thought it might
have been the hope of being admitted in the
society of the place, which would certainly
be a very agreeable rise for ci-devant Miss
Hoggins; and if this had been her hope, it
would be cruel to disappoint her. So everybody
called upon Mrs. Fitz-Adam—everybody
but Mrs. Jamieson, who used to show how
honourable she was by never seeing Mrs. Fitz-
Adam, when they met at the Cranford parties.
There would be only eight or ten ladies in the
room, and Mrs. Fitz-Adam was the largest of
all, and she invariably used to stand up when
Mrs. Jamieson came in, and curtsey very low
to her whenever she turned in her direction
—so low, in fact, that I think Mrs. Jamieson
must have looked at the wall above her, for
she never moved a muscle of her face, no
more than if she had not seen her. Still
Mrs. Fitz-Adam persevered.

The spring evenings were getting bright
and long, when three or four ladies in calashes
met at Miss Barker's door. Do you know
what a calash is ? It is a covering worn over
caps, not unlike the heads fastened on old-
fashioned gigs; but sometimes it is not quite
so large. This kind of head-gear always made
an awful impression on the children in
Cranford; and now two or three left off their play
in the quiet sunny little street, and gathered,
in wondering silence round Miss Pole, Miss
Matey, and myself. We were silent, too, so
that we could hear loud, suppressed whispers,
inside Miss Barker's house: " Wait, Peggy!
wait till I 've run upstairs, and washed my
hands. When I cough, open the door; I 'll
not be a minute."

And, true enough, it was not a minute
before we heard a noise, between a sneeze
and a crow; on which the door flew open.
Behind it stood a round-eyed maiden, all
aghast at the honourable company of calashes,
who marched in without a word. She
recovered presence of mind enough to usher us
into a small room, which had been the shop,
but was now converted into a temporary
dressing-roorn. There we unpinned and
shook ourselves, and arranged our features
before the glass into a sweet and gracious
company-face; and then, bowing backwards
with " After you, ma'am," we allowed Mrs.
Forrester to take precedence up the narrow
staircase that led to Miss Barker's drawing-
room. There she sat, as stately and
composed as though we had never heard that odd-
sounding cough, from which her throat must
have been even then sore and rough. Kind,
gentle, shabbily dressed Mrs. Forrester was
immediately conducted to the second place
of honour—a seat arranged something like
Prince Albert's near the Queen's—good, but
not so good. The place of pre-eminence was,
of course, reserved for the Honourable Mrs.
Jamieson, who presently came panting up the
stairs—Carlo rushing round her on her
progress, as if he meant to trip her up.

And now, Miss Betty Barker was a proud
and happy woman! She stirred the fire, and
shut the door, and sat as near to it as she
could, quite on the edge of her chair. When
Peggy came in, tottering under the weight of
the tea-tray, I noticed that Miss Barker was
sadly afraid lest Peggy should not keep her
distance sufficiently. She and her mistress
were on very familiar terms in their everyday
intercourse, and Peggy wanted now to
make several little confidences to her, which
Miss Barker was on thorns to hear; but
which she thought it her duty, as a lady, to
repress. So she turned away from all Peggy's
asides and signs; but she made one or two
very mal-apropos answers to what was said;
and at last, seized with a bright idea, she
exclaimed, " Poor sweet Carlo! I 'm forgetting
him. Come down stairs with me, poor
ittie doggie, and it shall have its tea, it shall!"
In a few minutes she returned, bland and
benignant as before; but I thought she had
forgotten to give the " poor ittie doggie"
anything to eat; judging by the avidity with
which he swallowed down chance pieces of
cake. The tea-tray was abundantly loaded.
I was pleased to see it, I was so hungry; but
I was afraid the ladies present might think
it vulgarly heaped up. I know they would
have done at their own houses; but somehow
the heaps disappeared here. I saw
Mrs. Jamieson eating seed-cake, slowly and
considerately, as she did everything; and I
was rather surprised, for I knew she had told
us, on the occasion of her last party, that she
never had it in her house, it reminded her so
much of scented soap. She always gave us
Savoy biscuits. However, Mrs. Jamieson
was kindly indulgent to Miss Barker's want
of knowledge of the customs of high life; and,
to spare her feelings, ate three large pieces of
seed-cake, with a placid, ruminating
expression of countenance, not unlike a cow's.

After tea there was some little demur and
difficulty. We were six in number; four
could play at Preference, and for the other
two there was Cribbage. But all, except