And visions of caudle cups, cradles, and monthly nurses, floated over Lady Cashel’s brain, and gave her a kind of dreamy feel that the world was going to begin again with her.

“But, mamma, is Adolphus really to be here on Tuesday?” said Lady Selina, recalling the two old women from their attendance on the unborn, to the necessities of the present generation.

“Indeed he is, my dear, and that’s what I sent for you for.  Your papa wishes to have a good deal of company here to meet your brother; and indeed it’s only reasonable, for of course this place would be very dull for him, if there was nobody here but ourselves—­and he’s always used to see so many people; but the worst is, it’s all to be done at once, and you know there’ll be so much to be got through before we’ll be ready for a house full of company,—­things to be got from Dublin, and the people to be asked.  And then, Selina,” and her ladyship almost wept as the latter came to her great final difficulty—­“What are we to do about a cook?—­Richards’ll never do; Griffiths says she won’t even do for ourselves, as it is.”

“Indeed she won’t, my lady; it was only impudence in her coming to such a place at all.—­She’d never be able to send a dinner up for eighteen or twenty.”

“What are we to do, Griffiths?  What can have become of all the cooks?—­I’m sure there used to be cooks enough when I was first married.”

“Well, my lady, I think they must be all gone to England, those that are any good; but I don’t know what’s come to the servants altogether; as your ladyship says, they’re quite altered for the worse since we were young.”

“But, mamma,” said Lady Selina, “you’re not going to ask people here just immediately, are you?”

“Directly, my dear; your papa wishes it done at once.  We’re to have a dinner-party this day week—­that’ll be Thursday; and we’ll get as many of the people as we can to stay afterwards; and we’ll get the O’Joscelyns to come on Wednesday, just to make the table look not quite so bare, and I want you to write the notes at once.  There’ll be a great many things to be got from Dublin too.”

“It’s very soon after poor Harry Wyndham’s death, to be receiving company,” said Lady Selina, solemnly.  “Really, mamma, I don’t think it will be treating Fanny well to be asking all these people so soon.  The O’Joscelyns, or the Fitzgeralds, are all very well—­just our own near neighbours; but don’t you think, mamma, it’s rather too soon to be asking a house-full of strange people?”

“Well, my love, I was thinking so, and I mentioned it to your father; but he said that poor Harry had been dead a month now—­and that’s true, you know—­and that people don’t think so much now about those kind of things as they used to; and that’s true too, I believe.”