y that you
do to me. I wish I could really think it.'

A postscript begs Caroline 'not to forget about the ages.'

In this fashion the two ladies open their hearts, and contrive to read
one another perfectly in their mutual hypocrisies.

Some letters bearing the signatures of Mr. John Raikes, and Miss Polly
Wheedle, likewise pass. Polly inquires for detailed accounts of the
health and doings of Mr. Harrington. Jack replies with full particulars
of her own proceedings, and mild corrections of her grammar. It is to
be noted that Polly grows much humbler to him on paper, which being
instantly perceived by the mercurial one, his caressing condescension
to her is very beautiful. She is taunted with Mr. Nicholas Frim, and
answers, after the lapse of a week, that the aforesaid can be nothing to
her, as he 'went in a passion to church last Sunday and got married.'
It appears that they had quarrelled, 'because I danced with you that
night.' To this Mr. Raikes rejoins in a style that would be signified by
'ahem!' in language, and an arrangement of the shirt collar before the
looking-glass, in action.

CHAPTER XXXIX. IN THE DOMAIN OF TAILORDOM

There was peace in Mr. Goren's shop. Badgered Ministers, bankrupt
merchants, diplomatists with a headache--any of our modern grandees
under difficulties, might have envied that peace over which Mr. Goren
presided: and he was an enviable man. He loved his craft, he believed
that he had not succeeded the millions of antecedent tailors in vain;
and, excepting that trifling coquetry with shirt-fronts, viz., the red
crosses, which a shrewd rival had very soon eclipsed by representing
nymphs triangularly posed, he devoted himself to his business from
morning to night; as rigid in demanding respect from those beneath him,
as he was profuse in lavishing it on his patrons. His public boast was,
that he owed no man a farthing; his secret comfort, that he possessed
two thousand pounds in the Funds. But Mr. Goren did not stop here.
Behind these external characteristics he nursed a passion. Evan was
astonished and pleased to find in him an enthusiastic fern-collector.
Not that Mr. Harrington shared the passion, but the sight of these brown
roots spread out, ticketed, on the stained paper, after supper, when the
shutters were up and the house defended from the hostile outer world;
the old man poring over them, and naming this and that spot where,
during his solitary Saturday afternoon and Sund