A DISAPPOINTMENT On ordinary Sundays the Byasses breakfasted at ten o'clock; this morning the meal was ready at eight, and Bessie's boisterous spirits declared the exception to be of joyous significance.

Finding that Samuel's repeated promises to rise were the merest evasion, she rushed into the room where he lay fly-fretted, dragged the pillows from under his tousled head, and so belaboured him in schoolboy fashion that he had no choice but to leap towards his garments.

In five minutes he roared down the kitchen-stairs for shaving-water, and in five minutes more was seated in his shirt-sleeves, consuming fried bacon with prodigious appetite.

Bessie had the twofold occupation of waiting upon him and finishing the toilet of the baby; she talked incessantly and laughed with an echoing shrillness which would have given a headache for the rest of the day to any one of average nervous sensibility.
They were going to visit Samuel's parents, who lived at Greenwich.
Bessie had not yet enjoyed an opportunity of exhibiting her first-born to the worthy couple; she had, however, written many and long letters on the engrossing subject, and was just a little fluttered with natural anxiety lest the infant's appearance or demeanour should disappoint the expectations she had excited.

Samuel found his delight in foretelling the direst calamities.
'Don't say I didn't advise you to draw it mild,' he remarked whilst breakfasting, when Bessie had for the tenth time obliged him to look round and give his opinion on points of costume.