t barks, and receive another choke.

'Mr. Copperfield!' said the sister with the letter.

I did something--bowed, I suppose--and was all attention, when the other
sister struck in.

'My sister Lavinia,' said she 'being conversant with matters of this
nature, will state what we consider most calculated to promote the
happiness of both parties.'

I discovered afterwards that Miss Lavinia was an authority in affairs
of the heart, by reason of there having anciently existed a certain Mr.
Pidger, who played short whist, and was supposed to have been enamoured
of her. My private opinion is, that this was entirely a gratuitous
assumption, and that Pidger was altogether innocent of any such
sentiments--to which he had never given any sort of expression that
I could ever hear of. Both Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa had a
superstition, however, that he would have declared his passion, if he
had not been cut short in his youth (at about sixty) by over-drinking
his constitution, and over-doing an attempt to set it right again by
swilling Bath water. They had a lurking suspicion even, that he died of
secret love; though I must say there was a picture of him in the house
with a damask nose, which concealment did not appear to have ever preyed
upon.

'We will not,' said Miss Lavinia, 'enter on the past history of this
matter. Our poor brother Francis's death has cancelled that.'

'We had not,' said Miss Clarissa, 'been in the habit of frequent
association with our brother Francis; but there was no decided division
or disunion between us. Francis took his road; we took ours. We
considered it conducive to the happiness of all parties that it should
be so. And it was so.'

Each of the sisters leaned a little forward to speak, shook her head
after speaking, and became upright again when silent. Miss Clarissa
never moved her arms. She sometimes played tunes upon them with her
fingers--minuets and marches I should think--but never moved them.

'Our niece's position, or supposed position, is much changed by our
brother Francis's death,' said Miss Lavinia; 'and therefore we consider
our brother's opinions as regarded her position as being changed too. We
have no reason to doubt, Mr. Copperfield, that you are a young gentleman
possessed of good qualities and honourable character; or that you have
an affection--or are fully persuaded that you have an affection--for our
niece.'

I replied, as I usually did whenever I had a chance, tha