't you be a silly puss,
and don't you think flightily and eloquently about degenerate
impossibilities. There! Now, I'll go back to myself.'

'Dear Fanny, let me say first, that I would far rather we worked for
a scanty living again than I would see you rich and married to Mr
Sparkler.'

'Let you say, my dear?' retorted Fanny. 'Why, of course, I will let you
say anything. There is no constraint upon you, I hope. We are together
to talk it over. And as to marrying Mr Sparkler, I have not the
slightest intention of doing so to-night, my dear, or to-morrow morning
either.'

'But at some time?'

'At no time, for anything I know at present,' answered Fanny, with
indifference. Then, suddenly changing her indifference into a burning
restlessness, she added, 'You talk about the clever men, you little
thing! It's all very fine and easy to talk about the clever men; but
where are they? I don't see them anywhere near me!'

'My dear Fanny, so short a time--'

'Short time or long time,' interrupted Fanny. 'I am impatient of our
situation. I don't like our situation, and very little would induce
me to change it. Other girls, differently reared and differently
circumstanced altogether, might wonder at what I say or may do. Let
them. They are driven by their lives and characters; I am driven by
mine.'

'Fanny, my dear Fanny, you know that you have qualities to make you the
wife of one very superior to Mr Sparkler.'

'Amy, my dear Amy,' retorted Fanny, parodying her words, 'I know that I
wish to have a more defined and distinct position, in which I can assert
myself with greater effect against that insolent woman.'

'Would you therefore--forgive my asking, Fanny--therefore marry her
son?'

'Why, perhaps,' said Fanny, with a triumphant smile. 'There may be many
less promising ways of arriving at an end than that, MY dear. That piece
of insolence may think, now, that it would be a great success to get her
son off upon me, and shelve me. But, perhaps, she little thinks how I
would retort upon her if I married her son.

I would oppose her in everything, and compete with her. I would make it
the business of my life.'

Fanny set down the bottle when she came to this, and walked about the
room; always stopping and standing still while she spoke.

'One thing I could certainly do, my child: I could make her older. And I
would!'

This was followed by another walk.

'I would talk of her as an old woman. I would pretend to know-