4b 
FLORAL CONVERSATION. 
other. I doubt whether the elder ever broke out of a 
walk or into a laugh in his life, whereas the younger 
would be scampering all over the place, with his little sis¬ 
ter breathless behind, and his merry voice making our 
hearts glad. Now they were in the conservatory, chang- 
ing the tallies, and sticking the fallen flowers of the 
Camellia upon the Euphorbia’s thorns ; now turning out 
a lot of sparrows, which they had caught in traps, and 
adorned with appendages of brilliant worsted, red, green, 
and yellow, in the immediate neighborhood of the aviary' 
and so essaying to impose upon us the idea of a general 
escape and dispersion of all our feathered curiosities ; and 
now “drawing ” the shrubberies, with Lord Evelyn at one 
end as master* of fox-hounds, and Lady Alice at the other 
as an under-whip, waiting, watchful and silent, for the 
fox to break, which he generally did in the guise of a 
blackbird ; and then announcing his exit with the prompt¬ 
est and shrillest of “tally-hos.” Our marquis the while 
was indoors at his books, having, it was reported, a pre¬ 
cocious relish for algebra, and an insight into the science 
of political economy not often to be found (thank Heaven) 
in young gentlemen of fourteen. 
Years passed. There was some misunderstanding be¬ 
tween the marquis and the Cambridge examiners on the 
