Grandmarina gave a magnificent wedding feast
afterwards, in which there was everything and
more to eat, and everything and more to drink.
The wedding cake was delicately ornamented
with white satin ribbons, frosted silver and
white lilies, and was forty-two yards round.

When Grandmarina had drunk her love to
the young couple, and Prince Certainpersonio
had made a speech, and everybody had cried
Hip Hip Hip Hurrah! Grandmarina announced
to the King and Queen that in future there would
be eight Quarter Days in every year, except
in leap year, when there would be ten. She
then turned to Certainpersonio and Alicia, and
said, "My dears, you will have thirty-five
children, and they will all be good and beautiful.
Seventeen of your children will be boys,
and eighteen will be girls. The hair of the
whole of your children will curl naturally. They
will never have the measles, and will have
recovered from the whooping-cough before being
born."

On hearing such good news, everybody cried
out "Hip Hip Hip Hurrah!" again.

"It only remains," said Grandmarina in
conclusion, "to make an end of the fish-bone."

So she took it from the hand of the Princess
Alicia, and it instantly flew down the throat of
the dreadful little snapping pug-dog next door
and choked him, and he expired in convulsions.

ON BEING CUT.

"MY dear, have you heard the news? Mrs.
Blank was cut yesterday on parade."

What had Mrs. Blank done, that no one
would speak to her? She might have gone
to Captain Noname's bungalow openly in the
sight of gods and men: ladies commit such
mistakes sometimes in India, and pay the
penalty resulting—and know why they pay it.
Or, it might have been reported that she had
gone; and reports do quite as well as truth for
the whetstone of the scalping-knife. In which
case she would understand no more than her
own baby why the brigadier's wife was suddenly
afflicted with short-sightedness and manual
paralysis, as she held out her hand for the usual
evening greeting; and why the major's four
daughters had all stiff necks, and looked as if
they had been dining on sour limes when
she bowed to them in her airy, smiling, careless
way as she passed; why the bandsmen glanced
cunningly, and nudged each other slyly; while
the subs looked knowing, and one or two of the
more objectionable kind addressed her with a
contemptuous familiarity that brought the
blood to her cheeks. It may, of course, be
that conscience lent her a burning torch by
which to read the meaning of her
uncomfortable reception, and that she knows she
must either bow her head to the storm or
brazen it out, according as she is disposed by
nature and nerve. It will not much signify what
she does, poor soul! The thunderbolt has been
launched, and, innocent or guilty, she must bear
the mark of the burn to the end of her life.

She has been cut; and though the wound may
be healed over, as wounds do heal over, yet
the scar will remain, and will never quite cease
to ache.

I remember a case, when I was a girl, which
was a good lesson as to the expediency of keeping
strictly to one's own business. A certain
Miss Jones (not to be too explicit), a girl
of our own age and standing, got into terrible
disrepute in the neighbourhood where we all
lived. Her story was considered a bad one.
It was the scandal of the day. Wherever you
saw three or four men congregated together, and
speaking in veiled voices—wherever there was a
cluster of women's heads bent inward to an
imaginary centre, like sheep before a storm—there
you might be sure the crimes and improprieties
of Miss Jones were in full swing of discussion
and reprobation. People began to look coldly
and more coldly on her; she was left out
of every party; she was visited with increasing
rareness; and at last it was resolved that she
should be publicly cut. Accordingly, Miss
Jones was cut. This seemed to one of her
young friends and companions dreadfully
unfair. This friend was a blundering, honest-hearted
young person, enthusiastic for truth and fair-
dealing, and constitutionally unable to foresee
personal difficulties as the result of inconsiderate
action. So she took it on herself to enlighten
Miss Jones as to reasons why, to give her an
opportunity of defending herself. For she did
not believe the public report, and, girl-like,
thought the world cruel and the friend faultless.
She told her story; and got the reward righteously
apportioned to rashness. She might as well
have upset a cauldron of oil into a furnace, and
have expected it to prove a patent fire-
annihilator as to have thought that she was
preparing a way of peace by telling truth and the
reports.

Miss Jones had a mother; a small, tightly
framed old lady, with a sharp nose and a pointed
chin, small red-brown eyes, and a shrill voice.
Miss Jones herself, with her resolute lips,
was no coward, and could stand to her guns
manfully. They both did battle. Calls were
made on all the gentry round, and letters were
written; reports were sifted, but the sifting
came to worse than nothing, and had better
have been left alone; counter-accusations were
made; and there was a general outcry of the
pot against all kettles. In short, the whole
amount of defensive artillery practicable for
the occasion was employed: to no good: Miss
Jones was cut, and the wound would not
reunite, although the sharp-eyed lady-mother
passed three-fourths of her time in the office
of the local lawyer, not averse to business.
Perhaps there would have been the same
confusion had any one at that hill station told
pretty little Mrs. Blank why she was cut on
parade.

Some cuts are given in pure mistake and
misapprehension. Some years ago, a young
English girl was staying with some friends at
a small French village—one of those villages
where everybody knows the business of