ar you now call me."

"Well," said Mrs. Mivers, emphatically, "are you coming, or are you not?
Don't stand there shilly-shally."

"Mrs. Mivers," returned Ardworth, with a kind of sly humour, "I am sure
you would be very angry with your husband's excellent shopmen if
that was the way they spoke to your customers. If some unhappy
dropper-in,--some lady who came to buy a yard or so of Irish,--was
suddenly dazzled, as I am, by a luxury wholly unforeseen and eagerly
coveted,--a splendid lace veil, or a ravishing cashmere, or whatever
else you ladies desiderate,--and while she was balancing between
prudence and temptation, your foreman exclaimed: `Don't stand
shilly-shally'--come, I put it to you."

"Stuff!" said Mrs. Mivers.

"Alas! unlike your imaginary customer (I hope so, at least, for the sake
of your till), prudence gets the better of me; unless," added Ardworth,
irresolutely, and glancing at Helen,--"unless, indeed, you are not
sufficiently protected, and--"

"Purtected!" exclaimed Mrs. Mivers, in an indignant tone of
astonishment, and agitating the formidable umbrella; "as if I was not
enough, with the help of this here domestic commodity, to purtect a
dozen such. Purtected, indeed!"

"John is right, Mrs. M.,--business is business," said Mr. Mivers. "Let
us move on; we stop the way, and those idle lads are listening to us,
and sniggering."

"Sniggering!" exclaimed the gentle helpmate. "I should like to see
those who presume for to snigger;" and as she spoke, she threw a look
of defiance around her. Then, having thus satisfied her resentment,
she prepared to obey, as no doubt she always did, her lord and master.
Suddenly, with a practised movement, she wheeled round Mr. Mivers, and
taking care to protrude before him the sharp point of the umbrella, cut
her way through the crowd like the scythed car of the Ancient Britons,
and was soon lost amidst the throng, although her way might be guessed
by a slight ripple of peculiar agitation along the general stream,
accompanied by a prolonged murmur of reproach or expostulation which
gradually died in the distance.

Ardworth gazed after the fair form of Helen with a look of regret; and
when it vanished, with a slight start and a suppressed sigh he turned
away, and with the long, steady stride of a strong man, cleared his path
through the Strand towards the printing-office of a journal on which he
was responsibly engaged.

But Percival, who had caught much of the con