r doleful lamentations of that nature,
which she delivered with great propriety and decorum.

'Miss, miss,' whispered Dennis, beckoning to her with his forefinger,
'come here--I won't hurt you. Come here, my lamb, will you?'

On hearing this tender epithet, Miss Miggs, who had left off screaming
when he opened his lips, and had listened to him attentively, began
again, crying: 'Oh I'm his lamb! He says I'm his lamb! Oh gracious, why
wasn't I born old and ugly! Why was I ever made to be the youngest of
six, and all of 'em dead and in their blessed graves, excepting
one married sister, which is settled in Golden Lion Court, number
twenty-sivin, second bell-handle on the--!'

'Don't I say I an't a-going to hurt you?' said Dennis, pointing to a
chair. 'Why miss, what's the matter?'

'I don't know what mayn't be the matter!' cried Miss Miggs, clasping her
hands distractedly. 'Anything may be the matter!'

'But nothing is, I tell you,' said the hangman. 'First stop that noise
and come and sit down here, will you, chuckey?'

The coaxing tone in which he said these latter words might have failed
in its object, if he had not accompanied them with sundry sharp jerks of
his thumb over one shoulder, and with divers winks and thrustings of his
tongue into his cheek, from which signals the damsel gathered that he
sought to speak to her apart, concerning Miss Haredale and Dolly. Her
curiosity being very powerful, and her jealousy by no means inactive,
she arose, and with a great deal of shivering and starting back, and
much muscular action among all the small bones in her throat, gradually
approached him.

'Sit down,' said the hangman.

Suiting the action to the word, he thrust her rather suddenly and
prematurely into a chair, and designing to reassure her by a little
harmless jocularity, such as is adapted to please and fascinate the sex,
converted his right forefinger into an ideal bradawl or gimlet, and
made as though he would screw the same into her side--whereat Miss Miggs
shrieked again, and evinced symptoms of faintness.

'Lovey, my dear,' whispered Dennis, drawing his chair close to hers.
'When was your young man here last, eh?'

'MY young man, good gentleman!' answered Miggs in a tone of exquisite
distress.

'Ah! Simmuns, you know--him?' said Dennis.

'Mine indeed!' cried Miggs, with a burst of bitterness--and as she said
it, she glanced towards Dolly. 'MINE, good gentleman!'

This was just what Mr Dennis want