CHAPTER X.

GRANDMOTHER.

AM in London. I came here a fortnight ago, to stay with grandmother. Mother is no better, and the doctor says she is not likely to be so till the winter has gone and the summer comes again. It is November now

a horrible month, Bob says, for my first visit to London; but Aunt Agatha fixed the time, and father found it convenient to bring me then. Aunt Agatha has gone to stay with Dr. Hammond's sister for a little while, so Marmaduke and Winifred are having holidays too. My grandmother is a dear old lady; and I am sure she must be very good, for she is my mother's mother. Aunt Caroline, mother's sister, lives with her. She looks much older than mother. Bob says he should think she was, at least, ten years older.

Grandmother loves London. I cannot think why;

for I agree with Bob, that it is the most horrid place you can imagine-no fields, no trees, no sun; nothing but fog, and mist, and rain, and dirt—at least, I've seen nothing else since I've been here. She came to see mother at the Farm about four years ago, soon after she was first taken ill; and when grandmother went back, she said she could never make the long journey again, and she should like now to stay in London for the rest of her life.

I should not think grandmother could live much longer, though she seems very strong and well, for she must be very old. Bob came, from school, to spend the evening with us last night, and when I wished him "good-bye" on the door-step, we both agreed that she must be at least a hundred. She remembers, it seems, everything that ever happened-Queen Victoria coming to the throne in 1837, seeing her crowned in 1838.

She never forgets a date, and she tells me dates so often, that I am sure when I go back to Scarsbrook Aunt Agatha will think me very much improved in history.

And grandmother has been to every place anybody ever heard of, and was always there just in time to see one of the royal family pay a visit to the place. She remembers being in Scotland when George IV. landed there.

Grandmother is so loyal. She loves the Queen with all her heart, and all her children and grandchildren, and ever so many kings and queens that reigned before her. She will stay for hours in the Park in the summer, Aunt Caroline says, to see the Queen pass, though she has seen her over and over again for forty years.

She lost a dear friend at the battle of Leipsic, in 1813. She had kept the anniversary of his death, she told me, about a fortnight before I came; and when I leave here, she is expecting some friends of sixty years' standing to come and pay her a visit! I put the dates down when grandmother tells me about all these things, because Bob says she is sure to question me about them again.

It seems to her only like the other day that railways were introduced. She said she travelled from Liverpool to Manchester in 1830, in the first train that ever ran. She was in Edinburgh the first day gas was burnt there. I can't remember half the places to which she has been. Bob says he does not try to remember one; and he does not believe that grandmother really remembers half the things she pretends she does.

I have seen two sights since I've been in London"Guy Fawkes" and "Lord Mayor's Show." It seemed so funny to see people in the streets with masks on their faces, as I had never seen anything like it; but Bob said I must not look too pleased, as every one would not know that I had never been to London before, and people in London thought nothing of these things.

Lord mayor's show was very beautiful, I thought. It seemed to me just like "Cinderella and the Glass Slipper." The horses, coaches, and coachmen were exactly the same as those the fairy godmother made out of the pumpkin, rats, and mice. I wished Marmaduke could have seen it all. And the lord mayor was like the picture in Duke's book of Whittington and his cat.

Grandmother had two flags hung out of her window on that day; but she said it was not for lord mayor's show, but because it was the Prince of Wales's birthday.

The next day at breakfast she said to Aunt Caroline, "How well I remember poor Queen Caroline being acquitted to-day !—I named your aunt after that poor unfortunate queen," she then added, as she looked at me; "of course, you remember what queen I mean?" I was obliged to say I did not.

'My dear Caroline," grandmother said (she never called me "Bunchy "), "what does Agatha teach you? You seem to be dreadfully ignorant about history."

"She wasn't my godmother," I stammered, as an excuse. I really thought, till Bob told me I was very stupid to think such a thing, that Queen Caroline was my aunt's godmother, and that my grandmother thought she was mine too.

"You are really very backward for your age," grandmother said. "I wonder how it is."

"I don't know," I answered, "unless I was put in with the bread and taken out with the cakes." But I was sorry I said this, afterwards, for I saw that grandmother did not like the remark.

Oh, I shall be so glad to get home again! Grandmother is very kind to me, and the shops are very grand; but I am tired of looking at the shops, and I am tired of grandmother and London. I want to see mother and father again; and I love every inch of ground in Scarsbrook: every villager I meet is a friend, every stone on the road seems to say something to me

F

But here I have no friends, and I do so miss Bruce and

Neptune.

But I dare say it is a little dull at Scarsbrook now. The winter seems to be dull everywhere. They were weeding the ground, for the new corn, when I came away. Most farmers hunt in the winter; but my father does not care for hunting, so winter is rather a lazy time for him. But he cares for very little now, except to see that his men do their work well, and then to sit and read to mother. It seems as if he could not spend hours enough now in mother's sick-room.

I left Marmaduke very happy because Aunt Agatha had gone away. He dislikes lessons quite as much as I do; but Winny seemed sorry, for she likes her little bits of lessons, and, poor little thing! she cried because I was coming to London.

The last week I was at Scarsbrook I played a good deal with her at dolls' tea-parties, and their having birthdays, and dolls being ill, and their mothers going to London and bringing them back presents. I wonder if I could teach her to play at dolls having lord mayor shows when I go home, or if I could buy a dolly's mask? wouldn't it be fun?

I have really tried lately to be kind to my little sister, and she has been very loving in return; and mother has heard of what I have done, and has been pleased.