nly wild and wicked for the same reason, and, in an ecstasy of
unrequited love, taken to wrench off door-knockers, and invert the boxes
of rheumatic watchmen! How had she recruited the king's service, both
by sea and land, through rendering desperate his loving subjects between
the ages of eighteen and twenty-five! How many young ladies had publicly
professed, with tears in their eyes, that for their tastes she was much
too short, too tall, too bold, too cold, too stout, too thin, too fair,
too dark--too everything but handsome! How many old ladies, taking
counsel together, had thanked Heaven their daughters were not like her,
and had hoped she might come to no harm, and had thought she would come
to no good, and had wondered what people saw in her, and had arrived at
the conclusion that she was 'going off' in her looks, or had never
come on in them, and that she was a thorough imposition and a popular
mistake!

And yet here was this same Dolly Varden, so whimsical and hard to please
that she was Dolly Varden still, all smiles and dimples and pleasant
looks, and caring no more for the fifty or sixty young fellows who at
that very moment were breaking their hearts to marry her, than if so
many oysters had been crossed in love and opened afterwards.

Dolly hugged her father as has been already stated, and having hugged
her mother also, accompanied both into the little parlour where the
cloth was already laid for dinner, and where Miss Miggs--a trifle more
rigid and bony than of yore--received her with a sort of hysterical
gasp, intended for a smile. Into the hands of that young virgin, she
delivered her bonnet and walking dress (all of a dreadful, artful,
and designing kind), and then said with a laugh, which rivalled the
locksmith's music, 'How glad I always am to be at home again!'

'And how glad we always are, Doll,' said her father, putting back the
dark hair from her sparkling eyes, 'to have you at home. Give me a
kiss.'

If there had been anybody of the male kind there to see her do it--but
there was not--it was a mercy.

'I don't like your being at the Warren,' said the locksmith, 'I can't
bear to have you out of my sight. And what is the news over yonder,
Doll?'

'What news there is, I think you know already,' replied his daughter. 'I
am sure you do though.'

'Ay?' cried the locksmith. 'What's that?'

'Come, come,' said Dolly, 'you know very well. I want you to tell me why
Mr Haredale--oh, how gruff he i