s.

They went first to Pettitt's, the little hair-dresser, where Tom was
marvellously taken with the two Penates, and could hardly be dragged
into the innermost recesses, where in the middle of a sheet, with a
peignoir on his shoulders, he submitted to the clipping of his
raven-black locks, as Mr. Pettitt called them, on the condition of
his sister looking on.

Presently they heard some feet enter the outer shop, and Mrs.
Duncombe's voice asking for Mr. Pettitt; while his mother replied
that he would wait on her immediately, but that he was just now
engaged with the Honourable Mr. De Lancey. "Could she show them
anything?"

"Oh no, thank you, we'll wait! Don't let us keep you, Mrs. Pettitt,
it is only on business."

"Ay!" said the other voice--female, and entirely untamed. "He's
your great ally about your gutters and drains, isn't he?"

"The only landowner in Wil'sbro' who has a particle of public
spirit!" said Mrs. Duncombe.

Whereat good-natured Lady Rosamond could not but smile
congratulation to the hair-cutter, who looked meekly elevated, while
Tom whispered, "Proverb contradicted."

But the other voice replied, "Of course--he's a perfumer, learned in
smells! You'd better drop it, Bessie! you'll never make anything of
it."

"I'll never drop what the health and life of hundreds of my fellow-
creatures depend on! I wish I could make you understand, Gussie!"

"You'll never do anything with my governor, if that's your hope--you
should hear him and the mum talking! 'It's all nonsense,' he says;
'I'm not going to annoy my tenants, and make myself unpopular, just
to gratify a fashionable cry.' 'Well,' says mumsey, 'it is not what
was thought the thing for ladies in my time; but you see, if Gussie
goes along with it, she will have the key to all the best county
society.' 'Bother the county society!' says I. 'Bessie Duncombe's
jolly enough--but such a stuck-up set as they all are at Compton,
I'll not run after, behaving so ill to the governor, too!' However--"

"There's a proverb about listeners!" said Rosamond, emerging when
she felt as if she ought to hearken no longer, and finding Mrs.
Duncombe leaning with her back to the counter, and a tall girl, a
few degrees from beauty, in a riding-habit, sitting upon it.

They both laughed; and the girl added, "If you had waited a moment,
Lady Rosamond, you would have heard that you were the only jolly one
of all the b'iling!"

"Ah! we shall see where you