to be snipped here and there with a pair of scissors, for some
botanical reason that was very powerful with Miss Tox. Miss Tox was slow
in coming to the plants, this morning. The weather was warm, the wind
southerly; and there was a sigh of the summer-time In Princess's Place,
that turned Miss Tox's thoughts upon the country. The pot-boy attached
to the Princess's Arms had come out with a can and trickled water, in
a flowering pattern, all over Princess's Place, and it gave the weedy
ground a fresh scent--quite a growing scent, Miss Tox said. There was a
tiny blink of sun peeping in from the great street round the corner, and
the smoky sparrows hopped over it and back again, brightening as they
passed: or bathed in it, like a stream, and became glorified sparrows,
unconnected with chimneys. Legends in praise of Ginger-Beer, with
pictorial representations of thirsty customers submerged in the
effervescence, or stunned by the flying corks, were conspicuous in the
window of the Princess's Arms. They were making late hay, somewhere
out of town; and though the fragrance had a long way to come, and many
counter fragrances to contend with among the dwellings of the poor (may
God reward the worthy gentlemen who stickle for the Plague as part and
parcel of the wisdom of our ancestors, and who do their little best
to keep those dwellings miserable!), yet it was wafted faintly into
Princess's Place, whispering of Nature and her wholesome air, as
such things will, even unto prisoners and captives, and those who are
desolate and oppressed, in very spite of aldermen and knights to boot:
at whose sage nod--and how they nod!--the rolling world stands still!

Miss Tox sat down upon the window-seat, and thought of her good Papa
deceased--Mr Tox, of the Customs Department of the public service; and
of her childhood, passed at a seaport, among a considerable quantity of
cold tar, and some rusticity. She fell into a softened remembrance of
meadows, in old time, gleaming with buttercups, like so many
inverted firmaments of golden stars; and how she had made chains of
dandelion-stalks for youthful vowers of eternal constancy, dressed
chiefly in nankeen; and how soon those fetters had withered and broken.

Sitting on the window-seat, and looking out upon the sparrows and
the blink of sun, Miss Tox thought likewise of her good Mama
deceased--sister to the owner of the powdered head and pigtail--of her
virtues and her rheumatism. And when a man