as active and vigorous, and full of their jokes with one another and their children. They are now gone out to the point of the rocks at the end of our promontory, fishing for microscopical monsters, and comporting themselves boy and girl fashion.
Isabel has meantime been chatting very pleasantly with grandmamma, and trying to extricate us from our bewilderment as to names and nicknames. My poor mother, after strenuously preventing abbreviations in her own family, has to endure them in her descendants, and as every one names a daughter after her, there is some excuse! This Oxford Margaret goes by the name of Pie or Pica, apparently because it is the remotest portion of Magpie, and her London cousin is universally known as Metelill-the Danish form, I believe; but in the Bourne Parva family the young Margaret Druce is nothing worse than Meg, and her elder sister remains Jane. 'Nobody would dare to call her anything else,' says Isa. Avice cannot but be sometimes translated into the Bird; while my poor name, in my second London niece, has become the masculine Charley. 'I shall know why when I see her,' says Isa laughing. This good-natured damsel is coming out walking with us old folks, and will walk on with me, when grandmamma turns back with Emily. Her great desire is to find the whereabouts of a convalescent home in which she and her cousins have subscribed to place a poor young dressmaker for a six weeks' rest; but I am afraid it is on the opposite side of S. Clements, too far for a walk.
July 5.-Why did you never tell me how charming Metelill is? I never supposed the Fulford features capable of so much beauty, and the whole manner and address are so delightful that I do not wonder that all her cousins are devoted to her; Uchtred, or Butts, as they are pleased to name him, has brightened into another creature since she came, and she seems like sunshine to us all. As to my namesake, I am sorry to say that I perceive the appropriateness of Charley; but I suppose it is style, for the masculine dress which in Pica and Avice has an air of being worn for mere convenience' sake, and is quite ladylike, especially on Avice, has in her an appearance of defiance and coquetry. Her fox-terrier always shares her room, which therefore is eschewed by her sister, and this has made a change in our arrangements. We had thought the room in our house, which it seems is an object of competition, would suit best for Jane Druce and one of her little sisters; but a hint was given by either Pica or her mother that it would be a great boon to let Jane and Avice share it, as they are very great friends, and we had the latter there installed. However, this fox-terrier made Metelill protest against sleeping at the hotel with her sister, and her mother begged us to take her in. Thereupon, Emily saw Isa looking annoyed, and on inquiry she replied sweetly, 'Oh, never mind, aunty dear; I daresay Wasp won't be so bad as he looks; and I'll try not to be silly, and then I daresay Charley will not tease me! Only I had hoped to be with dear Metelill; but no doubt she will prefer her Bird-people always do.' So they were going to make that poor child the victim! For it seems Pica has a room to herself, and will not give it up or take in any one. Emily went at once to Avice and asked whether she would mind going to the hotel, and letting Isa be with Metelill, and this she agreed to at once. I don't know why I tell you all these details, except that they are straws to show the way of the wind, and you will see how Isabel is always the sacrifice, unless some one stands up for her. Here comes Martyn to beguile me out to the beach.
July 6 (Sunday).-My mother drove to church and took Edith, who was glad neither to walk nor to have to skirmish for a seat. Isa walked with Emily and me, and so we made up our five for our seat, which, to our dismay, is in the gallery, but, happily for my mother, the stairs are easy. The pews there are not quite so close to one's nose as those in the body of the church; they are a little wider, and are furnished with hassocks instead of traps to prevent kneeling, so that we think ourselves well off, and we were agreeably surprised at the service. There is a new incumbent who is striving to modify things as well as his people and their architecture permit, and who preached an excellent sermon. So we triumph over the young folk, who try to persuade us that the gallery is a judgment on us for giving in to the hired pew system. They may banter me as much as they like, but I don't like to see them jest with grandmamma about it, as if they were on equal terms, and she does not understand it either. 'My dear,' she gravely says, 'your grandpapa always said it was a duty to support the parish church.' 'Nothing will do but the Congregational system in these days; don't you think so?' began Pica dogmatically, when her father called her off. Martyn cannot bear to see his mother teased. He and his wife, with the young ones, made their way to Hollyford, where they found a primitive old church and a service to match, but were terribly late, and had to sit in worm-eaten pews near the door, amid scents of peppermint and southernwood. On the way back, Martyn fraternised with a Mr. Methuen, a Cambridge tutor with a reading party, who has, I am sorry to say, arrived at the house vis-à-vis to ours, on the other side of the cove. Our Oxford young ladies turn up their noses at the light blue, and say the men have not the finish of the dark; but Charley is in wild spirits. I heard her announcing the arrival thus: 'I say, Isa, what a stunning lark! Not but that I was up to it all the time, or else I should have skedaddled; for this place was bound to be as dull as ditchwater.' 'But how did you know?' asked Isa. 'Why, Bertie Elwood tipped me a line that he was coming down here with his coach, or else I should have told the mater I couldn't stand it and gone to stay with some one.' This Bertie Elwood is, it seems, one of the many London acquaintance. He looks inoffensive, and so do the others, but I wish they had chosen some other spot for their studies, and so perhaps does their tutor, though he is now smoking very happily under a rock with Martyn.
July 7.-Such a delightful evening walk with Metelill and Isa as Emily and I had last night, going to evensong in our despised church! The others said they could stand no more walking and heat, and yet we met Martyn and Mary out upon the rocks when we were coming home, after being, I must confess, nearly fried to death by the gas and bad air. They laughed at us and our exertions, all in the way of good humour, but it was not wholesome from parents. Mary tried to make me confess that we were coming home in a self-complacent fakir state of triumph in our headaches, much inferior to her humble revelling in cool sea, sky, and moonlight. It was like the difference between the Benedicite and the Te Deum, I could not help thinking; while Emily said a few words to Martyn as to how mamma would be disappointed at his absenting himself from Church, and was answered, 'Ah! Emily, you are still the good home child of the primitive era,' which she did not understand; but I faced about and asked if it were not what we all should be. He answered rather sadly, 'If we could'; and his wife shrugged her shoulders. Alas! I fear the nineteenth century tone has penetrated them, and do not wonder that this poor Isabel does not seem happy in her home.
9.-What a delightful sight is a large family of young things together! The party is complete, for the Druces arrived yesterday evening in full force, torn from their bucolic life, as Martyn tells them. My poor dear old Margaret! She does indeed look worn and aged, dragged by cares like a colonist's wife, and her husband is quite bald, and as spare as a hermit. It is hard to believe him younger than Martyn; but then his whole soul is set on Bourne Parva, and hers on him, on the children, on the work, and on making both ends meet; and they toil five times more severely in one month than the professor and his lady in a year, besides having just twice as many children, all of whom are here except the schoolboys. Margaret declares that the entire rest, and the talking to something not entirely rural, will wind her husband up for the year; and it is good to see her sitting in a basket-chair by my mother, knitting indeed, but they both do that like breathing, while they purr away to one another in a state of perfect repose and felicity. Meantime her husband talks Oxford with Martyn and Mary. Their daughter Jane seems to be a most valuable helper to both, but she too has a worn, anxious countenance, and I fear she may be getting less rest than her parents, as they have brought only one young nursemaid with them, and seem to depend on her and Meg for keeping the middle-sized children in order. She seems to have all the cares of the world on her young brow, and is much exercised about one of the boxes which has gone astray on the railway. What do you think she did this morning? She started off with Avice at eight o'clock for the S. Clements station to see if the telegram was answered, and they went on to the Convalescent Home and saw the Oxford dressmaker. It seems that Avice had taken Uchtred with her on Sunday evening, made out the place, and gone to church at S. Clements close by-a very long walk; but it seems that those foolish girls thought me too fine a lady to like to be seen with her in her round hat on a Sunday. I wish they could understand what it is that I dislike. If I objected to appearances, I am afraid the poor Druces would fare ill. Margaret's girls cannot help being essentially ladies, but they have not much beauty to begin with-and their dress! It was chiefly made by their own sewing machine, with the assistance of the Bourne Parva mantua-maker, superintended by Jane, 'to prevent her from making it foolish'; and the effect, I grieve to say, is ill-fitting dowdiness, which becomes grotesque from their self-complacent belief that it displays the only graceful and sensible fashion in the place. It was laughable to hear them criticising every hat or costume they have seen, quite unaware that they were stared at themselves, till Charley told them people thought they had come fresh out of Lady Bountiful's goody-box, which piece of impertinence they took as a great compliment to their wisdom and excellence. To be sure, the fashions are distressing enough, but Metelill shows that they can be treated gracefully and becomingly, and even Avice makes her serge and hat look fresh and ladylike. Spite of contrast, Avice and Jane seem to be much devoted to each other. Pica and Charley are another pair, and Isa and Metelill-though Metelill is
