This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1859. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XCII tJNDER VINE AND FIG-TREE Eed I describe, young folks, the delights of the meeting at home, and the mother"s happiness with all her brood once more under her fond wings? It was wrote in her face, and acknowledged on her knees. Our house was large enough for all, but Aunt Hetty would not stay in it. She said, fairly, that to resign her motherhood over the elder children, who had been hers for nearly three years, cost her too great a pang; and she could not bear for yet a while to be with them, and to submit to take only the second place. So she and her father went away to a house at Bury St. Edmunds, not far from us, where they lived, and where she spoiled her eldest nephew and niece in private. It was the year after we came home that Mr. B, the Jamaica planter, died, who left her the half of his fortune; and then I heard, for the first time, how the worthy gentleman had been greatly enamoured of her in Jamaica, and, though she had refused him, had thus shown his constancy to her. Heaven knows how much property of Aunt Hetty"s Monsieur Miles hath already devoured! the price of his commission and outfit; his gorgeous uniforms; his play-debts and little transactions in the Minories;--lo you think, sirrah, I do not know what human nature is; what is the cost of Pall Mall taverns, petite sowpers, play--even in moderation--at the "Cocoa-Tree"; and that a gentleman cannot purchase all these enjoyments with the five hundred a year which I allow him? Aunt Hetty declares she has made up her mind to be an old maid. "I made a vow never to marry until I could find a man as good as my dear father," she said; "and I never did, Sir George. No, my dearest Theo, not half as good; and Sir George may put that in his pipe and smoke it." And yet when the good gener...