"On to the combat, say your worst;
And foul fall him who flinches first!"
replied Lady Mandeville. "The exception proves the rule; but there is such an argument in your favour, that for once I will give up the dispute—but mind, it is not to be considered a precedent."
So saying, she stepped upon the terrace to meet a beautiful boy, who came, glowing and out of breath, to ask for bread for the peacock. In sober seriousness, there is more poetry than truth in the sweet poem of Allan Cunningham—the Town and Country Child: witness the cheerful voices of the rosy faces to be met with in the smallest street and closest alley in London; but if an artist had wished for a model for the children so beautifully painted by the poet, Frank Mandeville—two months ago pale and languid, and now Frank Mandeville bright-eyed and cheerful—might fairly have sat for both likenesses.
