Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/802

762 poor children of the Roman Catholic schools to treats on Wimbledon Common. She would hire drags, and go up there for the afternoon with them. She never forgot them at Christmas, and she would always set aside a day or two for buying them toys. Her way of doing this was somewhat peculiar. She had been so used to buying things of itinerant vendors in the streets abroad that she could not break herself of the habit in England. So, instead of going to a toy shop, she used to take a four-wheel cab, and drive slowly down Oxford Street and Regent Street; and whenever she came across a pedlar with toys on a tray, she would pull up her cab and make her purchases. These purchases generally took a good deal of time, for Lady Burton had been so much in the habit of dealing at bazars in the East that she was always under the impression that the pedlars in England asked double or treble what they really thought they would get. The result was a good deal of bargaining between her and the vendors. She used to make wholesale purchases; and during her bargaining, which was carried on with much animation, a crowd assembled, and not infrequently the younger members of it came in for a share of the spoils.

To the day of her death she always felt strongly on the subject of the prevention of cruelty to animals, and indeed engaged in a fierce controversy with Father Vaughan on the subject of vivisection. She was never tired of denouncing the "barbarism of bearing-reins," and so forth. When she went out in