Frances proposed to me, an hour or two since, to take tea out on the lawn; I see the round table, loaded with china, placed under a certain beech; Hunsden is expected--nay, I hear he is come--there is his voice, laying down the law on some point with authority; that of Frances replies; she opposes him of course.

They are disputing about Victor, of whom Hunsden affirms that his mother is making a milksop.

Mrs.
Crimsworth retaliates:-- "Better a thousand times he should be a milksop than what he, Hunsden, calls 'a fine lad;' and moreover she says that if Hunsden were to become a fixture in the neighbourhood, and were not a mere comet, coming and going, no one knows how, when, where, or why, she should be quite uneasy till she had got Victor away to a school at least a hundred miles off; for that with his mutinous maxims and unpractical dogmas, he would ruin a score of children." I have a word to say of Victor ere I shut this manuscript in my desk--but it must be a brief one, for I hear the tinkle of silver on porcelain.
Victor is as little of a pretty child as I am of a handsome man, or his mother of a fine woman; he is pale and spare, with large eyes, as dark as those of Frances, and as deeply set as mine.

His shape is symmetrical enough, but slight; his health is good.

I never saw a child smile less than he does, nor one who knits such a formidable brow when sitting over a book that interests him, or while listening to tales of adventure, peril, or wonder, narrated by his mother, Hunsden, or myself.