SHOWING HOW POOR MRS.

MACNAMARA WAS TROUBLED AND HAUNTED TOO, AND OPENING A BUDGET OF GOSSIP.
Some score pages back, when we were all assembled at the King's House, my reader, perhaps, may not have missed our fat and consequential, but on the whole, good-natured acquaintance, Mrs.Macnamara; though, now I remember, he _did_ overhear the gentle Magnolia, in that little colloquy in which she and Aunt Becky exchanged compliments, say, in substance, that she hoped that amiable parent might be better next day.

She was not there, she was not well.

Of late Mrs.Macnamara had lost all her pluck, and half her colour, and some even of her fat.

She was like one of those portly dowagers in Numbernip's select society of metamorphosed turnips, who suddenly exhibited sympathetic symptoms of failure, grew yellow, flabby, and wrinkled, as the parent bulb withered and went out of season.