ne will believe it, I abhor the occupation.
There are moments when it almost overcomes me,--the perpetual in and
out of the needle, you will understand,--it seems so endless. Dear,
dear, there was a time when I was never obliged to do such menial
services, when I had numerous dependants to wait on me to do my
bidding But then"--with a deep sigh, that sounds like a blast from
Boreas--"I married the vicar."

"And quite right, too," says Clarissa, with a cheerful little nod,
seeing Mrs. Redmond has mounted her high horse and intends riding him
to the death. "I myself shouldn't hesitate about it, if I only got the
chance. And indeed where could any one get a more charming husband
than the dear vicar."

"Well, well, it was a foolish match notwithstanding," says Mrs.
Redmond, with a smile and a wan sort of blush; "though certainly at
that time I don't deny he was very fascinating. Such a voice, my dear!
and then his eyes were remarkably fine."

"'Were'--_are_, you mean," says the crafty Clarissa, knowing that
praise of her husband is sweet to the soul of the faded Penelope, and
that the surest means of reducing her to a pliant mood is to permit
her to maunder on uninterruptedly about past glories, and dead hours
rendered bright by age. To have her in her kindest humor, before
mentioning the real object of her visit, must be managed, at all
risks. "Yours was a love-match, wasn't it?" she says, coaxingly. "Do
tell me all about it." (She has listened patiently to every word of it
about a hundred times before.) "I do so like a real love-affair."

"There isn't much to tell," says Mrs. Redmond, who is quite delighted,
and actually foregoes the charm of darning, that she may the more
correctly remember each interesting detail in her own "old story;"
"but it was all very sudden,--very; like a tornado, or a whirlwind, or
those things in the desert that cover one up in a moment. First we met
at two croquet-parties,--yes, two,--and then at a dinner at the
Ramseys, and it was at the dinner at the Ramseys' that he first
pressed my hand. I thought, my dear, I should have dropped, it was
such a downright, not-to-be-got-over sort of squeeze. Dear me, I can
almost feel it now," says Mrs. Redmond, who is blushing like a girl.

"Yes. Do go on," says Clarissa, who, in reality, is enjoying herself,
intensely.

"Well, then, two days afterwards, to my surprise, he called with some
tickets for a concert, to which my mamma, who suspected nothi