22 A PIC NIC. 



But, albeit this is true, too true, how could that plaguy woman, 

 her mother, have known it? For I have never breathed it to 

 mortal. I do not talk, that I know of, in my sleep. And if I 

 did, how should /Aa^ have enlightened Mrs. Allington? Adelaide 

 herself never, but once, caught me off my guard ; and I have no 

 knowledge of Adelaide's character, if her mother could have 

 obtained from her any sanction to her surmises. 



Ladies and gentlemen, I must digress. Digress, if you please, 

 with me. If you do n't like my goings on, shut me, leave me, 

 and there 's no harm done. 



In honest John's own den in Allington House there is a picture 

 of his dear — my dear, dear Adelaide, when she was but a child. 

 " How I do love," says the Ettrick Shepherd (and how I do 

 agree with him), " how I do love a well-educated little girl of 

 twelve." It is an age worth so much more than all other ages ; 

 — when the young heart is so entirely occupied with the warm 

 visitings of its own innocent gladness, (and at that age the ten- 

 derest heart is always the most joyous, for it has never known a 

 stain or a sorrow). It is a merry, because a pure and honest age, 

 and because its affections seem to it ta be immortal ; — death has 

 never severed, nor unkindness blighted, one bud of their sweet 

 stock. Alas! that such an age should ever lose its charm, — 

 for lose that charm it will and must. There is the presence, and 

 the consciousness, and the love, of all good — and the absence 

 and the ignorance of all ill. There is the fair and full promise of 

 all that hope can paint (and hope paints well); there is the fair 

 and full apology (and how seldom is the apology required !), for 

 that mystic, undisputed power, which, never claimed by the 

 feebler sex as a right, is sure to be yielded by the other, as much 

 from impulse as from courtesy. At that age the features repeat, 

 with ready truth, the blameless story of the eager mind. How 

 modestly are the outpourings of a buoyant spirit tempered by the 

 deepening tinge of that bashful yet dimpled cheek, and how elo- 

 quently are they pleaded for in the stealthy glance of that half- 

 penitent, half-laughing eye. There is nothing under the sky like 

 the clear deep beauty of the eye which I am thinking of, unless 

 it be the ocean when it lies calm and open to the sunshine, and 

 reflects only the brightness and the colours of heaven, on which 

 it looks. 



Do you understand me, ladies and gentlemen ? If you do not, 

 I pity you, all, and equally. 



