ess, his nods, winks, and
flattery so wrought upon the girl that she ceased to harbour suspicion.
Her primitive mind, much fed on penny fiction, accepted all she was
told, and in the consciousness of secret knowledge affecting lords and
ladies she gave up without a sigh the air-drawn vision of being herself
actually a member of an aristocratic family.

At the same time she thought of Gammon with disappointment, with vague
irritation, and began all but to wish that she had never weakly
pardoned him for his insulting violence at Mrs. Bubbs'.

CHAPTER XXV

THE MISSING WORD

Just at this time the inhabitants of England--one might say of the
British Isles--but more especially those privileged to dwell in London
and its suburbs, submitted to one of the waves of intellectual
excitement which, as is well known, are wont at intervals to pass over
this fervidly imaginative people. Some representative
person--ingenious, philosophic, and ardent for the public good--had
conceived in a bright moment a thought destined to stir with zeal the
pensive leisure of millions. This genius owned, or edited, a weekly
paper already dear to the populace, and one day he announced in its
columns a species of lottery--ignoble word dignified by the use here
made of it. Readers of adequate culture were invited to exercise their
learning and their wit in the conjectural completion of a sentence--no
quotation, but an original apophthegm--whereof one word was represented
by a blank. Each competitor sent, together with the fruit of his eager
brain, a small sum of money, and the brilliant enthusiast who at the
earliest moment declared the missing word reaped as guerdon the total
of these numerous remittances. It was an amusement worthy of our time;
it appealed alike to the villa and the humble lodging, encouraged the
habit of literary and logical discussion, gave an impulse to the sale
of dictionaries. High and low, far and wide, a spirit of noble
emulation took hold upon the users of the English tongue. "The missing
word"--from every lip fell the phrase which had at first sounded so
mysteriously; its vogue exceeded that, in an earlier time, of "the
missing link." The demand for postage stamps to be used in transmitting
the entrance fee threatened to disorganize that branch of the public
service; sorting clerks and letter carriers, though themselves
contributory, grew dismayed at the additional labour imposed upon them.

Naturally the infecti