ley assemblage.

There was a handsome girl, with beautiful teeth and neatly-braided
hair and such a brilliant smile, attracting a crowd round her as she
sang piquant songs in a sweet, deep-toned voice that ought to have
made her fortune on the stage if it had been properly cultivated--sang
them, too, with a look and manner that I have seen seldom rivalled by
the cleverest actresses; and I thought what a face and form were
wasted here to make profit for one knave and sport for some fifty
fools. As she accompanied herself on the harp, and touched its strings
with a grace and expression which made amends for a certain want of
tuition, I could not help fancying her in a drawing-room, surrounded
by admirers, making many a heart ache with her arch smile and winning
ways. Without being _positively_ beautiful, she had the knack so few
women possess of looking charming in every attitude and with every
expression of countenance; and although her songs were of a somewhat
florid school, yet I could not help thinking that, with those natural
gifts and a plaintive old ballad, English or Scotch, such as "Annie
Laurie" or "The Nut-brown Maid" to bring them out, in a pretty
drawing-room, with the assistance of a good dressmaker--dear! she
might marry a duke if she liked.

And yet all this belonged to a dark, close-shaved ruffian, with silver
rings and a yellow handkerchief, who scowled and prowled about her,
and looked as if he was likely enough to beat her when they got home.
But she hands up an ivory bowl for contributions amongst the young
dandies on the roof of a neighbouring coach, who have been listening
open-mouthed to the siren, and shillings and half-crowns, and a bit of
gold from the one last out of the Bench, pour into it; and she moves
off, to make way for three French glee-maidens with a monkey and a
tambourine, and the swells return to their cigars and their betting,
and we are all attention for the next event on the card, because it is
a gentlemen-riders' race; and the performances will consequently be as
different as possible from what we have just seen.

"We'll secure a good place for this, Kate," says Cousin John, edging
his horse in as near the judges' stand as he can get. "Frank Lovell
has a mare to run, and I have backed her for a sovereign."

"Dear, I hope she'll win!" is my ardent rejoinder.

"Thank you, Kate," says kind Cousin John, who concludes I take an
unusual interest in his speculations; and forthwith