ing him what was
his buth, parentidg, and ediccation. "Dear Frederic," says she, "why
this mistry about yourself and your hactions? why hide from your little
Mary"--they were as tender as this, I can tell you--"your buth and your
professin?"

I spose Mr. Frederic looked black, for I was ONLY listening, and he
said, in a voice hagitated by emotion, "Mary," said he, "if you love
me, ask me this no more: let it be sfishnt for you to know that I am a
honest man, and that a secret, what it would be misery for you to larn,
must hang over all my actions--that is from ten o'clock till six."

They went on chaffin and talking in this melumcolly and mysterus
way, and I didn't lose a word of what they said; for them houses in
Pentonwille have only walls made of pasteboard, and you hear rayther
better outside the room than in. But, though he kep up his secret, he
swore to her his affektion this day pint blank. Nothing should prevent
him, he said, from leading her to the halter, from makin her his
adoarable wife. After this was a slight silence. "Dearest Frederic,"
mummered out miss, speakin as if she was chokin, "I am yours--yours
for ever." And then silence agen, and one or two smax, as if there
was kissin going on. Here I thought it best to give a rattle at the
door-lock; for, as I live, there was old Mrs. Shum a-walkin down the
stairs!

It appears that one of the younger gals, a-looking out of the bed-rum
window, had seen my master come in, and coming down to tea half an hour
afterwards, said so in a cussary way. Old Mrs. Shum, who was a dragon of
vertyou, cam bustling down the stairs, panting and frowning, as fat and
as fierce as a old sow at feedin time.

"Where's the lodger, fellow?" says she to me.

I spoke loud enough to be heard down the street--"If you mean, ma'am,
my master, Mr. Frederic Altamont, esquire, he's just stept in, and is
puttin on clean shoes in his bedroom."

She said nothink in answer, but flumps past me, and opening the
parlor-door, sees master looking very queer, and Miss Mary a-drooping
down her head like a pale lily.

"Did you come into my famly," says she, "to corrupt my daughters, and to
destroy the hinnocence of that infamous gal? Did you come here, sir, as
a seducer, or only as a lodger? Speak, sir, speak!"--and she folded her
arms quite fierce, and looked like Mrs. Siddums in the Tragic Mews.

"I came here, Mrs. Shum," said he, "because I loved your daughter, or
I never would have condesce