a sallow complexion, and an amiable disposition.  As to her features, there was not much to criticize in them, for she had little nose, less lip, and no eyebrow; and as to her intellect, her friend Mrs. Pettifer often said:  ’She didn’t know a more sensible person to talk to than Mary Linnet.  There was no one she liked better to come and take a quiet cup of tea with her, and read a little of Klopstock’s ‘Messiah.’  Mary Linnet had often told her a great deal of her mind when they were sitting together:  she said there were many things to bear in every condition of life, and nothing should induce her to marry without a prospect of happiness.  Once, when Mrs. Pettifer admired her wax-flowers, she said, “Ah, Mrs. Pettifer, think of the beauties of nature!” She always spoke very prettily, did Mary Linnet; very different, indeed, from Rebecca.’

Miss Rebecca Linnet, indeed, was not a general favourite.  While most people thought it a pity that a sensible woman like Mary had not found a good husband—­and even her female friends said nothing more ill-natured of her, than that her face was like a piece of putty with two Scotch pebbles stuck in it—­Rebecca was always spoken of sarcastically, and it was a customary kind of banter with young ladies to recommend her as a wife to any gentleman they happened to be flirting with—­her fat, her finery, and her thick ankles sufficing to give piquancy to the joke, notwithstanding the absence of novelty.  Miss Rebecca, however, possessed the accomplishment of music, and her singing of ’Oh no, we never mention her’, and ‘The Soldier’s Tear’, was so desirable an accession to the pleasures of a tea-party that no one cared to offend her, especially as Rebecca had a high spirit of her own, and in spite of her expansively rounded contour, had a particularly sharp tongue.  Her reading had been more extensive than her sister’s, embracing most of the fiction in Mr. Procter’s circulating library, and nothing but an acquaintance with the course of her studies could afford a clue to the rapid transitions in her dress, which were suggested by the style of beauty, whether sentimental, sprightly, or severe, possessed by the heroine of the three volumes actually in perusal.  A piece of lace, which drooped round the edge of her white bonnet one week, had been rejected by the next; and her cheeks, which, on Whitsunday, loomed through a Turnerian haze of network, were, on Trinity Sunday, seen reposing in distinct red outline on her shelving bust, like the sun on a fog-bank.  The black velvet, meeting with a crystal clasp, which one evening encircled her head, had on another descended to her neck, and on a third to her waist, suggesting to an active imagination either a magical contraction of the ornament, or a fearful ratio of expansion in Miss Rebecca’s person.  With this constant application of art to dress, she could have had little time for fancy-work, even if she had not been destitute of her sister’s taste for that delightful and truly feminine occupation.