unded wife.

"Play away, Tab, or I'll go and sit in the kitchen! They're cheerful
_there_! The next time I come across Mr. Horror, if I don't give him a
bit of my mind"--here he paused, and slapped his hand with much energy
upon the table. Mrs. Tag-rag wiped her eyes, sighed, and resumed her
book. Miss Tag-rag began to make tea, her papa gradually forgetting his
rage, as he fixed his dull gray eyes fondly on the pert skinny
countenance of his daughter.

"By the way, Tag," exclaimed Mrs. Tag-rag, suddenly, but in the same
mournful tone, addressing her husband, "you haven't of course forgot the
flowers for my new bonnet?"

"Never once thought of it," replied Tag-rag, doggedly.

"You haven't! Good gracious! what am I to go to chapel in next Sunday?"
she exclaimed with sudden alarm, closing her book, "and our seat in the
very front of the gallery!--bless me! I shall have a hundred eyes on
me!"

"Now that you're coming down a bit, and dropped out of the clouds--or
p'r'aps I should say--come up from beneath!--Dolly," said her husband,
much relieved, "I'll tell you a bit of news that will, I fancy,
rather"----

"Come! what is it, Tag?" she inquired with a sort of languid curiosity.

"What should you say of a chance of a certain somebody" (here he looked
unutterable things at his daughter) "that shall be nameless, becoming
mistress of ten thousand a-year?"

"Why"--Mrs. Tag-rag changed color--"has any one fallen in love with
Tab?"

"What should you say, Mrs. T., of our Tab marrying a man with ten
thousand a-year? There's for you! Isn't _that_ better than all your
rel---- hem!"

"Oh, Tag, don't say that; but"--here she hastily turned down the leaf of
_Groans from the Bottomless Pit_, and tossed that inestimable work upon
the sofa--"do tell me, lovey! what _are_ you talking about?"

"What indeed, Dolly!--I'm going to have him here to dinner next
Sunday."

Miss Tag-rag having been listening with breathless eagerness to this
little colloquy between her prudent and amiable parents, unconscious of
what she was about, poured almost all the contents of the tea-pot into
the sugar-basin, instead of her papa's and mamma's tea-cups.

"Have _who_, dear Tag?" inquired Mrs. Tag-rag, impatiently.

"Who? why whom but my Tittlebat Titmouse!! You've seen him, and heard me
speak of him often, you know"----

"What!--_that_ odious, nasty"----

"Hush, hush!" involuntarily exclaimed Tag-rag, with an apprehensive
air--"That's all p