reet; and in this little country town
there is a satisfaction about living in Quality Street which even
religion cannot give. Through the bowed window at the back we have a
glimpse of the street. It is pleasantly broad and grass-grown, and is
linked to the outer world by one demure shop, whose door rings a bell
every time it opens and shuts. Thus by merely peeping, every one in
Quality Street can know at once who has been buying a Whimsy cake, and
usually why. This bell is the most familiar sound of Quality Street.
Now and again ladies pass in their pattens, a maid perhaps protecting
them with an umbrella, for flakes of snow are falling discreetly.
Gentlemen in the street are an event; but, see, just as we raise the
curtain, there goes the recruiting sergeant to remind us that we are in
the period of the Napoleonic wars. If he were to look in at the window
of the blue and white room all the ladies there assembled would draw
themselves up; they know him for a rude fellow who smiles at the
approach of maiden ladies and continues to smile after they have
passed. However, he lowers his head to-day so that they shall not see
him, his present design being converse with the Misses Throssel's maid._

_The room is one seldom profaned by the foot of man, and everything in
it is white or blue. Miss Phoebe is not present, but here are Miss
Susan, Miss Willoughby and her sister Miss Fanny, and Miss Henrietta
Turnbull. Miss Susan and Miss Willoughby, alas, already wear caps; but
all the four are dear ladies, so refined that we ought not to be
discussing them without a more formal introduction. There seems no
sufficient reason why we should choose Miss Phoebe as our heroine
rather than any one of the others, except, perhaps, that we like her
name best. But we gave her the name, so we must support our choice and
say that she is slightly the nicest, unless, indeed, Miss Susan is
nicer._

_Miss Fanny is reading aloud from a library book while the others sew
or knit. They are making garments for our brave soldiers now far away
fighting the Corsican Ogre._

MISS FANNY. '... And so the day passed and evening came, black,
mysterious, and ghost-like. The wind moaned unceasingly like a
shivering spirit, and the vegetation rustled uneasily as if something
weird and terrifying were about to happen. Suddenly out of the
darkness there emerged a _Man_.

(_She says the last word tremulously but without looking up. The
listeners