ofa and sit in the
window-curtain, to tone himself down.

'Now, Edmund,' she said, stretching out her fan, and touching him with
it at arm's length, 'what I was going to say to you when you began as
usual to prose and worry, is, that I shall guard against our being alone
any more, and that when circumstances prevent my going out to my own
satisfaction, I must arrange to have some people or other always here;
for I really cannot, and will not, have another such day as this has
been.'

Mr Sparkler's sentiments as to the plan were, in brief, that it had no
nonsense about it. He added, 'And besides, you know it's likely that
you'll soon have your sister--'

'Dearest Amy, yes!' cried Mrs Sparkler with a sigh of affection.
'Darling little thing! Not, however, that Amy would do here alone.'

Mr Sparkler was going to say 'No?' interrogatively, but he saw his
danger and said it assentingly, 'No, Oh dear no; she wouldn't do here
alone.'

'No, Edmund. For not only are the virtues of the precious child of that
still character that they require a contrast--require life and movement
around them to bring them out in their right colours and make one love
them of all things; but she will require to be roused, on more accounts
than one.'

'That's it,' said Mr Sparkler. 'Roused.'

'Pray don't, Edmund! Your habit of interrupting without having the least
thing in the world to say, distracts one. You must be broken of it.
Speaking of Amy;--my poor little pet was devotedly attached to poor
papa, and no doubt will have lamented his loss exceedingly, and grieved
very much. I have done so myself. I have felt it dreadfully. But Amy
will no doubt have felt it even more, from having been on the spot the
whole time, and having been with poor dear papa at the last; which I
unhappily was not.'

Here Fanny stopped to weep, and to say, 'Dear, dear, beloved papa! How
truly gentlemanly he was! What a contrast to poor uncle!'

'From the effects of that trying time,' she pursued, 'my good little
Mouse will have to be roused. Also, from the effects of this long
attendance upon Edward in his illness; an attendance which is not
yet over, which may even go on for some time longer, and which in the
meanwhile unsettles us all by keeping poor dear papa's affairs from
being wound up. Fortunately, however, the papers with his agents
here being all sealed up and locked up, as he left them when he
providentially came to England, the affairs are in that sta