mit it. "It's nineteen years if it's a day. No one ought to know
dates if I don't, and there isn't one in the world understands her
ways unless it's me. Haven't I been up to your bedroom every night,
and with my own hand given you--" But she stopped herself, and was
too good a woman to declare before a young man what had been the
nature of her nightly ministrations to her guest.

"I don't think you'll be so comfortable anywhere else, Miss Spruce,"
said Eames.

"Comfortable! of course she won't," said Amelia. "But if I was mother
I wouldn't have any more words about it."

"It isn't the money I'm thinking of, but the feeling of it," said Mrs
Roper. "The house will be so lonely like. I shan't know myself; that
I shan't. And now that things are all settled so pleasantly, and that
the Lupexes must go on Tuesday--I'll tell you what, Sally; I'll pay
for the cab myself, and I'll start off to Dulwich by the omnibus
to-morrow, and settle it all out of my own pocket. I will indeed.
Come; there's the cab. Let me go down, and send him away."

"I'll do that," said Eames. "It's only sixpence, off the stand,"
Mrs Roper called to him as he left the room. But the cabman got
a shilling, and John, as he returned, found Jemima in the act of
carrying Miss Spruce's boxes back to her room. "So much the better
for poor Caudle," said he to himself. "As he has gone into the trade
it's well that he should have somebody that will pay him."

Mrs Roper followed Miss Spruce up the stairs and Johnny was left with
Amelia. "He's written to you, I know," said she, with her face turned
a little away from him. She was certainly very handsome, but there
was a hard, cross, almost sullen look about her, which robbed her
countenance of all its pleasantness. And yet she had no intention of
being sullen with him.

"Yes," said John. "He has told me how it's all going to be."

"Well?" she said.

"Well?" said he.

"Is that all you've got to say?"

"I'll congratulate you, if you'll let me."

"Psha;--congratulations! I hate such humbug. If you've no feelings
about it, I'm sure that I've none. Indeed I don't know what's the
good of feelings. They never did me any good. Are you engaged to
marry L. D.?"

"No, I am not."

"And you've nothing else to say to me?"

"Nothing,--except my hopes for your happiness. What else can I say?
You are engaged to marry my friend Cradell, and I think it will be a
happy match."

She turned away her face further from hi