ooking up with a sweet, open, earnest
countenance, 'teach me and help me to be good. I do not ask you to take
off my shoulders all the cares and duties of property, but I ask you to
share the burden, and to show me how to sustain my part well. Your
judgment is well balanced, your heart is kind, your principles are
sound. I know you are wise; I feel you are benevolent; I believe you are
conscientious. Be my companion through life; be my guide where I am
ignorant; be my master where I am faulty; be my friend always!'

"'So help me God, I will!'"

* * * * *

Yet again a passage from the blank book if you like, reader; if you
don't like it, pass it over:--

"The Sympsons are gone, but not before discovery and explanation. My
manner must have betrayed something, or my looks. I was quiet, but I
forgot to be guarded sometimes. I stayed longer in the room than usual;
I could not bear to be out of her presence; I returned to it, and basked
in it, like Tartar in the sun. If she left the oak parlour,
instinctively I rose and left it too. She chid me for this procedure
more than once. I did it with a vague, blundering idea of getting a word
with her in the hall or elsewhere. Yesterday towards dusk I had her to
myself for five minutes by the hall fire. We stood side by side; she was
railing at me, and I was enjoying the sound of her voice. The young
ladies passed, and looked at us; we did not separate. Ere long they
repassed, and again looked. Mrs. Sympson came; we did not move. Mr.
Sympson opened the dining-room door. Shirley flashed him back full
payment for his spying gaze. She curled her lip and tossed her tresses.
The glance she gave was at once explanatory and defiant. It said: 'I
like Mr. Moore's society, and I dare you to find fault with my taste.'

"I asked, 'Do you mean him to understand how matters are?'

"'I do,' said she; 'but I leave the development to chance. There will be
a scene. I neither invite it nor fear it; only, you must be present, for
I am inexpressibly tired of facing him solus. I don't like to see him in
a rage. He then puts off all his fine proprieties and conventional
disguises, and the real human being below is what you would call
_commun, plat, bas--vilain et un peu mechant_. His ideas are not clean,
Mr. Moore; they want scouring with soft soap and fuller's earth. I
think, if he could add his imagination to the contents of Mrs. Gill's
bucking-basket, and let her boi