to wish you hadn't such a face when those
insolent fellows talked of you--but you will get up your looks again when
I have the care of you. The first college living--there are some that
can't choose but drop before long! The worst is, I am growing no
younger!'

'Ah! but I am growing older!' she cried, triumphantly. 'All women from
twenty-five to forty are of the same age as all men from thirty to fifty.
We are of just the same standing, you see!'

'Seventeen years between us!'

'Nothing at all, as you will see when I put on my cap, and look staid.'

'No, no; I can't spare all that yellow hair.'

'Yellow indeed! if you don't know better what to call it, the sooner it
is out of sight the better.'

'Why, what do you call it?'

'Flaxen, to be sure--_blonde cendree_, if you like it better--that is the
colour of tow and ashes!'

She was like a playful kitten for the next quarter of a mile, her
prettiest sauciness returning in the exuberant, confiding gladness with
which she clung to the affection that at length satisfied her spirit; but
gravity came back to her as they entered the village.

'Poor Wrapworth!' she said, 'you will soon pass to strangers! It is
strange to know that, yet to feel the old days returning for which I have
pined ever since we were carried away from home and Mr. Pendy.'

'Yes, nothing is wanting but that we could remain here.'

'Never mind! We will make a better Wrapworth for one another, free from
the stains of my Castle Blanch errors and sorrows! I am even glad of the
delay. I want a little time to be good with poor dear Honor, now that I
have heart and spirit to be good.'

'And I grudge every week to her! I declare, Cilla, you make me wish evil
to my neighbour.'

'Then follow my example, and be content with this present gladness.'

'Ha! ha! I wonder what they'll say at Southminster. Didn't I row them
for using you so abominably? I have not been near them since!'

'More shame for you! Sarah is my best correspondent, and no one ever did
me so much good as Mrs. Prendergast.'

'I didn't ask her to do you good!'

'You ought to have done so then; for I should not be the happy woman I am
now if she had not done me good because she could not help it! I hope
they won't take it to heart.'

'I hope they will!'

'What?'

'Turning you out?'

'Oh, I meant your throwing yourself away on a broken-down governess!
There--let us have done with nonsense. Come in this way.'

It w