bert, in
remembrance of what his wife had spoken, hoping that Robert would
amorously stop his painful efforts to think fast enough for the occasion.
Robert, however, had nothing to say, and seemed willing to let Dahlia
depart. The only opponents to the plan were Mrs. Sumfit, a kindly, humble
relative of the farmer's, widowed out of Sussex, very loving and fat; the
cook to the household, whose waist was dimly indicated by her
apron-string; and, to aid her outcries, the silently-protesting Master
Gammon, an old man with the cast of eye of an antediluvian lizard, the
slowest old man of his time--a sort of foreman of the farm before Robert
had come to take matters in hand, and thrust both him and his master into
the background. Master Gammon remarked emphatically, once and for all,
that "he never had much opinion of London." As he had never visited
London, his opinion was considered the less weighty, but, as he advanced
no further speech, the sins and backslidings of the metropolis were
strongly brought to mind by his condemnatory utterance. Policy and
Dahlia's entreaties at last prevailed with the farmer, and so the fair
girl went up to the great city.

After months of a division that was like the division of her living
veins, and when the comfort of letters was getting cold, Rhoda, having
previously pledged herself to secresy, though she could not guess why it
was commanded, received a miniature portrait of Dahlia, so beautiful that
her envy of London for holding her sister away from her, melted in
gratitude. She had permission to keep the portrait a week; it was
impossible to forbear from showing it to Mrs. Sumfit, who peeped in awe,
and that emotion subsiding, shed tears abundantly. Why it was to be kept
secret, they failed to inquire; the mystery was possibly not without its
delights to them. Tears were shed again when the portrait had to be
packed up and despatched. Rhoda lived on abashed by the adorable new
refinement of Dahlia's features, and her heart yearned to her uncle for
so caring to decorate the lovely face.

One day Rhoda was at her bed-room window, on the point of descending to
encounter the daily dumpling, which was the principal and the unvarying
item of the midday meal of the house, when she beheld a stranger trying
to turn the handle of the iron gate. Her heart thumped. She divined
correctly that it was her uncle. Dahlia had now been absent for very many
months, and Rhoda's growing fretfulness sprang t