die if you don't."

"That we will," said the young nobleman on the bed; and this colloquy
Jos overheard, though he did not comprehend it, for the reason that he
had never studied the language in which it was carried on.

"Newmero kattervang dooze, si vous plait," Jos said in his grandest
manner, when he was able to speak.

"Quater fang tooce!" said the student, starting up, and he bounced into
his own room, where he locked the door, and where Jos heard him
laughing with his comrade on the bed.

The gentleman from Bengal was standing, disconcerted by this incident,
when the door of the 92 opened of itself and Becky's little head peeped
out full of archness and mischief. She lighted on Jos. "It's you,"
she said, coming out. "How I have been waiting for you! Stop! not
yet--in one minute you shall come in." In that instant she put a
rouge-pot, a brandy bottle, and a plate of broken meat into the bed,
gave one smooth to her hair, and finally let in her visitor.

She had, by way of morning robe, a pink domino, a trifle faded and
soiled, and marked here and there with pomaturn; but her arms shone out
from the loose sleeves of the dress very white and fair, and it was
tied round her little waist so as not ill to set off the trim little
figure of the wearer. She led Jos by the hand into her garret. "Come
in," she said. "Come and talk to me. Sit yonder on the chair"; and
she gave the civilian's hand a little squeeze and laughingly placed him
upon it. As for herself, she placed herself on the bed--not on the
bottle and plate, you may be sure--on which Jos might have reposed, had
he chosen that seat; and so there she sat and talked with her old
admirer. "How little years have changed you," she said with a look of
tender interest. "I should have known you anywhere. What a comfort it
is amongst strangers to see once more the frank honest face of an old
friend!"

The frank honest face, to tell the truth, at this moment bore any
expression but one of openness and honesty: it was, on the contrary,
much perturbed and puzzled in look. Jos was surveying the queer little
apartment in which he found his old flame. One of her gowns hung over
the bed, another depending from a hook of the door; her bonnet obscured
half the looking-glass, on which, too, lay the prettiest little pair of
bronze boots; a French novel was on the table by the bedside, with a
candle, not of wax. Becky thought of popping that into the bed too,
b