e book, but checked herself
with an effort, and said, with stern composure,--

"Well?"

"Well," said Miss Wimple, "there it is, and it is yours. It contains
a card, for the safety of which you were once concerned. It has
remained as safe, from that hour to this,--not only from my curiosity,
but that of all others, be they friends or foes of yours,--as though
you had kept it hidden in your bosom, and defended it with your
teeth and nails; _on my honor_!"

In these last words, and only then, Miss Wimple showed that she
could remember an insult, and avenge it--in her own way. She dropped
the pocket-book into the lap of Madeline, who, without a word, placed
it in her bosom.

"And now, my poor Madeline," said Miss Wimple, "we will speak no
more of these things. I beg you to understand me clearly,"--and
Miss Wimple suddenly altered her tone,--"we must not recur to this
subject. You will remain with me until we shall have decided what is
best for us to do. You are quite safe in this house; that you were
ever here need not be known hereafter, unless your honor or your
happiness should require that we divulge it. I must go now and open
the shop; and when I return to you, we will speak, if you please,
of other things."

"_But Miss Wimple's Hoop,--will you never come to that? Or is it
your intention to 'omit the part of Hamlet by particular request_?'"

Slowly and fairly,--we come to it now.

CHAPTER IV.

When the neat and modest little mistress of the Hendrik Athenaeum and
Circulating Library descended to open the shop and take down the bars,
all her sense of delicacy was shocked, and she was brought to shame;
for her meek skirts, missing the generous support of the quilted
silk petticoat, clung about her mortified extremities in thin and
limp dejection. It was plain to Miss Wimple that she looked
poverty-stricken,--an aspect most dreadful to the poor, and upon
which the brothers and sisters of penury who by hook or by crook
contrive to keep up appearances for the nonce have no mercy.
"Today," she thought, "callers will delight me not, nor customers
neither." But Miss Wimple was in a peculiarly provoking predicament,
and for such there is ever a malignant star;--callers and customers
dropped in, one after another, all day, as they had rarely come
before,--as though, indeed, her most spiteful enemy had got wind of
the petticoat affair, and sent them to plague her.

That day, Miss Wimple had recourse to as much