ot tended that dear couch for years?" Arabella said, "and
now--"

"Now she prefers somebody else. Well, sick people have these fancies,
and must be humoured. When she's well I shall go."

"Never, never," Arabella exclaimed, madly inhaling her salts-bottle.

"Never be well or never go, Miss Briggs?" the other said, with the same
provoking good-nature. "Pooh--she will be well in a fortnight, when I
shall go back to my little pupils at Queen's Crawley, and to their
mother, who is a great deal more sick than our friend. You need not be
jealous about me, my dear Miss Briggs. I am a poor little girl without
any friends, or any harm in me. I don't want to supplant you in Miss
Crawley's good graces. She will forget me a week after I am gone: and
her affection for you has been the work of years. Give me a little
wine if you please, my dear Miss Briggs, and let us be friends. I'm
sure I want friends."

The placable and soft-hearted Briggs speechlessly pushed out her hand
at this appeal; but she felt the desertion most keenly for all that,
and bitterly, bitterly moaned the fickleness of her Matilda. At the end
of half an hour, the meal over, Miss Rebecca Sharp (for such,
astonishing to state, is the name of her who has been described
ingeniously as "the person" hitherto), went upstairs again to her
patient's rooms, from which, with the most engaging politeness, she
eliminated poor Firkin. "Thank you, Mrs. Firkin, that will quite do;
how nicely you make it! I will ring when anything is wanted." "Thank
you"; and Firkin came downstairs in a tempest of jealousy, only the
more dangerous because she was forced to confine it in her own bosom.

Could it be the tempest which, as she passed the landing of the first
floor, blew open the drawing-room door? No; it was stealthily opened by
the hand of Briggs. Briggs had been on the watch. Briggs too well heard
the creaking Firkin descend the stairs, and the clink of the spoon and
gruel-basin the neglected female carried.

"Well, Firkin?" says she, as the other entered the apartment. "Well,
Jane?"

"Wuss and wuss, Miss B.," Firkin said, wagging her head.

"Is she not better then?"

"She never spoke but once, and I asked her if she felt a little more
easy, and she told me to hold my stupid tongue. Oh, Miss B., I never
thought to have seen this day!" And the water-works again began to
play.

"What sort of a person is this Miss Sharp, Firkin? I little thought,
while enjoying m