ed, and expected.

'Ah!' he said, looking so soothingly, not to say amorously on Miggs,
that she sat, as she afterwards remarked, on pins and needles of
the sharpest Whitechapel kind, not knowing what intentions might be
suggesting that expression to his features: 'I was afraid of that. I saw
as much myself. It's her fault. She WILL entice 'em.'

'I wouldn't,' cried Miggs, folding her hands and looking upwards with
a kind of devout blankness, 'I wouldn't lay myself out as she does; I
wouldn't be as bold as her; I wouldn't seem to say to all male creeturs
"Come and kiss me"'--and here a shudder quite convulsed her frame--'for
any earthly crowns as might be offered. Worlds,' Miggs added solemnly,
'should not reduce me. No. Not if I was Wenis.'

'Well, but you ARE Wenus, you know,' said Mr Dennis, confidentially.

'No, I am not, good gentleman,' answered Miggs, shaking her head with an
air of self-denial which seemed to imply that she might be if she chose,
but she hoped she knew better. 'No, I am not, good gentleman. Don't
charge me with it.'

Up to this time she had turned round, every now and then, to where Dolly
and Miss Haredale had retired and uttered a scream, or groan, or laid
her hand upon her heart and trembled excessively, with a view of keeping
up appearances, and giving them to understand that she conversed with
the visitor, under protest and on compulsion, and at a great personal
sacrifice, for their common good. But at this point, Mr Dennis looked
so very full of meaning, and gave such a singularly expressive twitch
to his face as a request to her to come still nearer to him, that
she abandoned these little arts, and gave him her whole and undivided
attention.

'When was Simmuns here, I say?' quoth Dennis, in her ear.

'Not since yesterday morning; and then only for a few minutes. Not all
day, the day before.'

'You know he meant all along to carry off that one!' said Dennis,
indicating Dolly by the slightest possible jerk of his head:--'And to
hand you over to somebody else.'

Miss Miggs, who had fallen into a terrible state of grief when the first
part of this sentence was spoken, recovered a little at the second,
and seemed by the sudden check she put upon her tears, to intimate
that possibly this arrangement might meet her views; and that it might,
perhaps, remain an open question.

'--But unfort'nately,' pursued Dennis, who observed this: 'somebody else
was fond of her too, you see; and even