thousand a year, at the very lowest computation; and, with the present rise in wages and house-rent, that calculation can't last very long. Love? Attachment? Look at Frank Maythorn, with his vernal blushes, his leafy whiskers, his sunshiny laughing face, and all the birds of spring carolling in his jolly voice; and old General Pinwood hobbling in on his cork leg, with his stars and orders, and leering round the room from under his painted eyebrows. Will my modest nymph go to Maythorn, or to yonder leering Satyr, who totters towards her in his white and rouge? Nonsense. She gives her garland to the old man, to be sure. He is ten times as rich as the young one. And so they went on in Arcadia itself, really. Not in that namby-pamby ballet and idyll world, where they tripped up to each other in rhythm, and talked hexameters; but in the real downright no-mistake country-Arcadia-where Tityrus, fluting to Amaryllis in the shade, had his pipe very soon put out when Meliboeus (the great grazier) performed on his melodious, exquisite, irresistible cowhorn; and where Daphne's mother dressed her up with ribbons and drove her to market, and sold her, and swapped her, and bartered her like any other lamb in the fair. This one has been trotted to the market so long now that she knows the way herself. Her baa has been heard for-do not let us count how many seasons. She has nibbled out of countless hands; frisked in many thousand dances; come quite harmless away from goodness knows how many wolves. Ah! ye lambs and raddled innocents of our Arcadia ! Ah, old Ewe ! Is it of your ladyship this fable is narrated? I say it is as old as Cadmus, and man-andmutton-kind.

So, when Philip comes to Beaunash Street, Agnes listens to him most kindly, sweetly, gently, and affectionately. Her pulse goes up very nearly half a beat when the echo of his horse's heels is heard in the quiet street. It undergoes a corresponding depression when the daily grief of parting is encountered and overcome. Blanche and Agnes don't love each other very passionately. If I may say as much regarding those two lambkins, they butt at each other they quarrel with each other-but they have secret understandings. During Phil's visits the girls remain together, you understand, or mamma is with the young people. Female friends may come in to call on Mrs. Twysden, and the matrons whisper together, and glance at the cousins, and look knowing. "Poor orphan boy!" mamma says to a sister matron. "I am like a mother to him since my dear sister died. His own home is so blank, and ours so merry, so affectionate ! There may be intimacy, tender regard, the utmost confidence between cousinsthere may be future and even closer ties between them-but you

understand, dear Mrs. Matcham, no engagement between them. He is eager, hot-headed, impetuous, and imprudent, as we all know. She has not seen the world enough-is not sure of herself, poor dear child! Therefore every circumspection, every caution is necessary. There must be no engagement, no letters between them. My darling Agnes does not write to ask him to dinner without showing the note to me or her father. My dearest girls respect themselves." "Of course, my dear Mrs. Twysden, they are admirable, both of them. Bless you, darlings! Agnes, you look radiant! Ah, Rosa, my child, I wish you had dear Blanche's complexion!"

"And isn't it monstrous keeping that poor boy hanging on until Mr. Woolcomb has made up his mind about coming forward?" says dear Mrs. Matcham to her own daughter, as her brougham-door closes on the pair. "Here he comes! Here is

his cab. Maria Twysden is one of the smartest women in England -that she is."

“How odd it is, mamma, that the beau cousin and Captain Woolcomb are always calling, and never call together!" remarks the ingénue.

"They might quarrel if they met. They say young Mr. Firmin is very quarrelsome and impetuous!" says mamma.

"But how are they kept apart?"

Chance, my dear! mere chance!" says mamma. And they agree to say it is chance-and they agree to pretend to believe one another. And the girl and the mother know everything about Woolcomb's property, everything about Philip's property and expectations, everything about all the young men in London, and those coming on. And Mrs. Matcham's girl fished for Captain Woolcomb last year in Scotland, at Loch-hookey; and stalked him to Paris; and they went down on their knees to Lady Banbury when they heard of the theatricals at the Cross; and pursued that man about until he is forced to say, "Confound me! Hang me! it's too bad of that woman and her daughter, it is now, I give you my honour it is! And all the fellows chaff me! And she took a house in Regent's Park, opposite our barracks, and asked for her daughter to learn to ride in our school-I'm blest if she didn't, Mrs. Twysden! and I thought my black mare would have kicked her off one day-I mean the daughter-but she stuck on like grim death; and the fellows call them Mrs. Grim Death and her daughter. Our surgeon called them so, and a doosid rum fellow -and they chaff me about it, you know-ever so many of the fellows do-and I'm not going to be had in that way by Mrs. Grim Death and her daughter! No, not as I knows, if you please!"

"You are a dreadful man, and you gave her a dreadful name, Captain Woolcomb!" says mamma.

"It wasn't me. It was the surgeon, you know, Miss Agnes: a doosid funny and witty fellow, Nixon is-and sent a thing once to Punch, Nixon did. I heard him make the riddle in Albany Barracks and it riled Foker so! You've no idea how it riled Foker, for he's in it!"

"In it?" asks Agnes, with the gentle smile, the candid blue eyes —the same eyes, expression, lips, that smile and sparkle at Philip. "Here it is! Capital! Took it down! Wrote it into my pocket-book at once as Nixon made it. 'All doctors like my first, that's clear!' Dr. Firmin does that. Don't you see, Miss Agnes! FEE! Don't you see?"

Old Parr Street party!

"Fee! Oh, you droll thing!" cries Agnes, smiling, radiant, very much puzzled.

"My second,'" goes on the young officer- "My second gives us Foker's beer!'"

66 6

'My whole's the shortest month in all the year !' Don't you see, Mrs. Twysden? FEE-BREWERY, DON'T YOU SEE? February! A doosid good one, isn't it now? and I wonder Punch never put it in. And, upon my word, I used to spell it Febuary before, I did; and I daresay ever so many fellows do still. And I know the right way now, and all from that riddle which Nixon made."

The ladies declare he is a droll man, and full of fun He rattles on, artlessly telling his little stories of sport, drink, adventure, in which the dusky little man himself is a prominent figure. Not honey-mouthed Plato would be listened to more kindly by those three ladies. A bland frank smile shines over Talbot Twysden's noble face, as he comes in from his office, and finds the Creole prattling. "What! you here, Woolcomb? Hey! Glad to see you!" And the gallant hand goes out and meets and grasps Woolcomb's tiny kid glove.

"He has been so amusing, papa! He has been making us die with laughing! Tell papa that riddle you made, Captain Woolcomb." "That riddle I made? That riddle Nixon, our surgeon, made. 'All doctors like my first, that's clear,'" &c.

And da capo. And the family, as he expounds this admirable rebus, gather round the young officer in a group, and the curtain drops.

As in a theatre booth at a fair there are two or three performances in a day, so in Beaunash Street a little genteel comedy is played twice at four o'clock with Mr. Firmin, at five o'clock with Mr. Woolcomb; and for both young gentlemen, same smiles, same eyes, same voice, same welcome. Ah, bravo! ah, encore !

F

CHAPTER X

IN WHICH WE VISIT "ADMIRAL BYNG"

ROM long residence in Bohemia, and fatal love of bachelor ease and habits, Master Philip's pure tastes were so destroyed, and his manners so perverted, that, you will hardly believe it, he was actually indifferent to the pleasures of the refined home we have just been describing; and, when Agnes was away, sometimes even when she was at home, was quite relieved to get out of Beaunash Street. He is hardly twenty yards from the door, when out of his pocket there comes a case; out of the case there jumps an aromatic cigar, which is scattering fragrance around as he is marching briskly northwards to his next house of call. The pace

is even more lively now than when he is hastening on what you call the wings of love to Beaunash Street. At the house whither he is now going, he and the cigar are always welcome. There is no need of munching orange chips, or chewing scented pills, or flinging your weed away half-a-mile before you reach Thornhaugh Street the low vulgar place. I promise you Phil may smoke at Brandon's, and find others doing the same. He may set the house on fire, if so minded, such a favourite is he there; and the Little Sister, with her kind beaming smile, will be there to bid him welcome. How that woman loved Phil, and how he loved her, is quite a curiosity; and both of them used to be twitted with this attachment by their mutual friends, and blush as they acknowledged it. Ever since the little nurse had saved his life as a schoolboy, it was à la vie à la mort between them. Phil's father's chariot used to come to Thornhaugh Street sometimes-at rare times--and the Doctor descend thence and have colloquies with the Little Sister. She attended a patient or two of his. She was certainly very much better off in her money matters in these late years, since she had known Dr. Firmin. Do you think she took money from him? As a novelist, who knows everything about his people, I am constrained to say, Yes. She took enough to pay some little bills of her weak-minded old father, and send the bailiff's hand from his old collar. But no more. as much as that," she said to the Doctor.

"I think you owe him But as for compliments

between them-"Dr. Firmin, I would die rather than be beholden to you for anything," she said, with her little limbs all in a tremor, and her eyes flashing anger. "How dare you, sir, after old days, be a coward and pay compliments to me; I will tell your son of you, sir!" and the little woman looked as if she could have stabbed the elderly libertine there as he stood. And he shrugged his handsome shoulders: blushed a little too, perhaps : gave her one of his darkling looks, and departed. She had believed him once. She had married him, as she fancied. He had tired of her; forsaken her; left her-left her even without a name. She had not known his for long years after her trust and his deceit. "No, sir, I wouldn't have your name now, not if it were a lord's, I wouldn't, and a coronet on your carriage. You are beneath me now, Mr. Brand Firmin!" she had said.

How came she to love the boy so? Years back, in her own horrible extremity of misery, she could remember a week or two of a brief, strange, exquisite happiness, which came to her in the midst of her degradation and desertion, and for a few days a baby in her arms, with eyes like Philip's. It was taken from her, after a few days-only sixteen days. Insanity came upon her, as her dead infant was carried away :-insanity, and fever, and struggle -ah! who knows how dreadful? She never does. There is a gap in her life which she never can recall quite. But George Brand Firmin, Esq., M.D., knows how very frequent are such cases of mania, and that women who don't speak about them often will cherish them for years after they appear to have passed away. The Little Sister says, quite gravely, sometimes, "They are allowed to come back. They do come back. Else what's the good of little cherubs bein' born, and smilin', and happy, and beautiful—say, for sixteen days, and then an end? I've talked about it to many ladies in grief sim'lar to mine was, and it comforts them. And when I saw that child on his sick-bed, and he lifted his eyes, I knew him, I tell you, Mrs. Ridley. I don't speak about it; but I knew him, ma'am; my angel came back again. I know him by the eyes. Look at 'em. Did you ever see such eyes? They look as if they had seen heaven. His father's don't." Mrs. Ridley believes this theory solemnly, and I think I know a lady, nearly connected with myself, who can't be got quite to disown it. And this secret opinion to women in grief and sorrow over their newborn lost infants Mrs. Brandon persists in imparting. "I know a case, "the nurse murmurs, "of a poor mother who lost her child at sixteen days old; and sixteen years after, on the very day, she saw him again.'

Philip knows so far of the Little Sister's story, that he is the