for your good word with your sister, Hexam?' And I say, 'Certainly, Mr. Headstone, and naturally I have a good deal of influence with her.' So I have; haven't I, Liz?" "Yes, Charley."

"Well said! Now, you see, we begin to get on, the moment we begin to be really talking it over, like brother and sister. Very well. Then you come in. As Mr. Headstone's wife you would be occupying a most respectable station, and you would be holding a far better place in society than you hold now, and you would at length get quit of the river-side and the old disagreeables belonging to it, and you would be rid for good of dolls' dress-makers and their drunken fathers, and the like of that. Not that I want to disparage Miss Jenny Wren: I dare say she is all very well in her way; but her way is not your way as Mr. Headstone's wife. Now, you see, Liz, on all three accounts-on Mr. Headstone's, on mine, on yours-nothing could be better or more desirable."

"It means what I have told you, Charley, and nothing more."

"That's not true," said the boy, in a violent tone, "and you know it's not. It means your precious Mr. Wrayburn; that's what it means.' "Charley! If you remember any old days of ours together, forbear!"

"But you shall not disgrace me," doggedly pursued the boy. "I am determined that after I have climbed up out of the mire you shall not pull me down. You can't disgrace me if I have nothing to do with you, and I will have nothing to do with you for the future."

"Charley! On many a night like this, and many a worse night, I have sat on the stones of the street, hushing you in my arms. Unsay those words without even saying you are sorry for them, and my arms are open to you still, and so is my heart."

"I'll not unsay them. I'll say them again. You are an inveterately bad girl, and a false sister, and I have done with you. Forever, I have done with you!"

He threw up his ungrateful and ungracious hand as if it set up a barrier between them, and

"Having so much influence with you, Liz, as I have, perhaps I should have done better to have had a little chat with you in the first instance, before Mr. Headstone spoke for himself. But really all this in his favor seemed so plain and undeniable, and I knew you to have always been so reasonable and sensible, that I didn't consider it worth while. Very likely that was a mistake of mine. However, it's soon set right. All that need be done to set it right, is for you to tell me at once that I may go home and tell Mr. Headstone that what has taken place is not final, and that it will all come round by-and-by."

He stopped again. The pale face looked anxiously and lovingly at him, but she shook her head.

"Can't you speak ?" said the boy, sharply. "I am very unwilling to speak, Charley. If I must, I must. I can not authorize you to say any such thing to Mr. Headstone: I can not allow you to say any such thing to Mr. Headstone. Nothing remains to be said to him from me, after what I have said for good and all tonight."

"And this girl," cried the boy, contemptuously throwing her off again, "calls herself a sister!"

"Charley, dear, that is the second time that you have almost struck me. Don't be hurt by my words. I don't mean-Heaven forbid!-that you intended it; but you hardly know with what a sudden swing you removed yourself from me." "However!" said the boy, taking no heed of the remonstrance, and pursuing his own mortified disappointment, "I know what this means, and you shall not disgrace me."

remained impassive on the same spot, silent and motionless, until the striking of the church clock roused her, and she turned away. But then, with the breaking up of her immobility came the breaking up of the waters that the cold heart of the selfish boy had frozen. And "O that I were lying here with the dead!" and "O Charley, Charley, that this should be the end of our pictures in the fire !" were all the words she said, as she laid her face in her hands on the stone coping.

A figure passed by, and passed on, but stopped and looked round at her. It was the figure of an old man with a bowed head, wearing a large brimmed low-crowned hat, and a longskirted coat. After hesitating a little the figure turned back, and, advancing with an air of gentleness and compassion, said:

"Pardon me, young woman, for speaking to you, but you are under some distress of mind. I can not pass upon my way and leave you weeping here alone, as if there was nothing in the place. Can I help you? Can I do any thing to give you comfort ?"

She raised her head at the sound of these kind words, and answered gladly, "Oh, Mr. Riah, is it you ?"

"My daughter," said the old man, "I stand amazed! I spoke as to a stranger. Take my arm, take my arm. What grieves you? Who has done this? Poor girl, poor girl!”

"My brother has quarreled with me," sobbed Lizzie, "and renounced me."

"He is a thankless dog," said the Jew, angrily. "Let him go. Shake the dust from thy feet and let him go. Come, daughter! Come home with me-it is but across the road-and take a little time to recover your peace and to make your eyes seemly, and then I will bear you

company through the streets. For it is past your usual time, and will soon be late, and the way is long, and there is much company out of doors to-night."

She accepted the support he offered her, and they slowly passed out of the church-yard. They were in the act of emerging into the main thoroughfare, when another figure loitering discontentedly by, and looking up the street and down it, and all about, started and exclaimed, "Lizzie! why, where have you been? Why, what's the matter?"

As Eugene Wrayburn thus addressed her she drew closer to the Jew and bent her head. The Jew having taken in the whole of Eugene at one sharp glance, cast his eyes upon the ground, and stood mute.

"Lizzie, what is the matter?"

"Mr. Wrayburn, I can not tell you now. I can not tell you to-night, if I ever can tell you. Pray leave me."

"But, Lizzie, I came expressly to join you. I came to walk home with you, having dined at a coffee-house in this neighborhood and know

CHAPTER XVI.

AN ANNIVERSARY OCCASION.

THE estimable Twemlow, dressing himself in his lodgings over the stable-yard in Duke Street, Saint James's, and hearing the horses at their toilet below, finds himself on the whole in a disadvantageous position as compared with the noble animals at livery. For whereas, on the one hand, he has no attendant to slap him soundingly and require him in gruff accents to come up and come over, still, on the other hand, he has no attendant at all; and the mild gentleman's finger-joints and other joints working rustily in the morning, he could deem it agreeable even to be tied up by the countenance at his chamberdoor, so he were there skillfully rubbed down and slushed and sluiced and polished and clothed, while himself taking merely a passive part in these trying transactions.

How the fascinating Tippins gets on when arraying herself for the bewilderment of the senses of men, is known only to the Graces and her maid; but perhaps even that engaging creature, though not reduced to the self-dependence of Twemlow, could dispense with a good deal of the trouble attendant on the daily restoration of her charms, seeing that as to her face and neck this adorable divinity is, as it were, a diurnal species of lobster-throwing off a shell every forenoon, and needing to keep in a retired spot until the new crust hardens.

Howbeit, Twemlow doth at length invest himself with collar and cravat and wristbands to his knuckles, and goeth forth to breakfast. And to breakfast with whom but his near neighbors, the Lammles of Sackville Street, who have imparted to him that he will meet his distant kinsman, Mr. Fledgeby. The awful Snigsworth might taboo and prohibit Fledgeby, but the peaccable Twemlow reasons, "If he is my kinsman I didn't make him so, and to meet a man is not to know him."

It is the first anniversary of the happy marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Lammle, and the celebration is a breakfast, because a dinner on the desired scale of sumptuosity can not be achieved within less limits than those of the non-existent palatial residence of which so many people are madly envious. So Twemlow trips with not a little stiffness across Piccadilly, sensible of haying once been more upright in figure and less in danger of being knocked down by swift vehicles. To be sure that was in the days when he hoped for leave from the dread Snigsworth to do something, or be something, in life, and before that magnificent Tartar issued the ukase, "As he will never distinguish himself, he must be a poor gentleman-pensioner of mine, and let him hereby consider himself pensioned."

ful or less, to believe in the Fancy to this hour, than to know her for a greedy armor-plated crocodile, with no more capacity of imagining the delicate and sensitive and tender spot behind thy waistcoat, than of going straight at it with a knitting-needle. Say likewise, my Twemlow, whether it be the happier lot to be a poor relation of the great, or to stand in the wintry slush giving the hack horses to drink out of the shallow tub at the coach-stand, into which thou hast so nearly set thy uncertain foot. Twemlow says nothing, and goes on.

As he approaches the Lammles' door, drives up a little one-horse carriage, containing Tippins the divine. Tippins, letting down the window, playfully extols the vigilance of her cavalier in being in waiting there to hand her out. Twemlow hands her out with as much polite gravity as if she were any thing real, and they proceed up stairs: Tippins all abroad about the legs, and seeking to express that those unsteady articles are only skipping in their native buoyancy.

And dear Mrs. Lammle and dear Mr. Lammle, how do you do, and when are you going down to what's-its-name place-Guy, Earl of Warwick, you know-what is it ?-Dun Cow-to claim the flitch of bacon? And Mortimer, whose name is forever blotted out from my list of lovers, by reason first of fickleness and then of base desertion, how do you do, wretch? And Mr. Wrayburn, you here! What can you come for, because we are all very sure beforehand that you are not going to talk! And Veneering, M.P., how are things going on down at the House, and when will you turn out those terrible people for us? And Mrs. Veneering, my dear, can it positively be true that you go down to that stifling place night after night, to hear those men prose? Talking of which, Veneering, why don't you prose, for you haven't opened your lips there yet, and we are dying to hear what you have got to say to us! Miss Podsnap, charmed to see you. Pa, here? No! Ma, neither? Oh! Mr. Boots! Delighted. Mr. Brewer! This is a gathering of the clans. Thus Tippins, and surveys Fledgeby and outsiders through golden glass, murmuring as she turns about and about, in her innocent giddy way, Any body else I know? No, I think not. Nobody there. Nobody there. Nobody any where!

Mr. Lammle, all a-glitter, produces his friend Fledgeby, as dying for the honor of presentation to Lady Tippins. Fledgeby presented, has the air of going to say something, has the air of going to say nothing, has an air successively of meditation, of resignation, and of desolation, backs on Brewer, makes the tour of Boots, and fades into the extreme back-ground, feeling for his whisker, as if it might have turned up since he was there five minutes ago.

VOL. XXX.-No. 178.-Mм

again. He is dying now, of want of presentation to Twemlow.

Twemlow offers his hand. Glad to see him. "Your mother, Sir, was a connection of mine." "I believe so," says Fledgeby, "but my mother and her family were two."

so, and mostly that she has her eyes upon Veneering. Strange that this impression so abides by Twemlow after being corrected, yet so it is.

Lady Tippins partaking plentifully of the fruits of the earth (including grape-juice in the cate

"I always am," says Fledgeby.

"You like town," says Twemlow. But is felled flat by Fledgeby's taking it quite ill, and replying, No, He don't like town. Lammle tries to break the force of the fall by remarking that some people do not like town. Fledgeby retorting that he never heard of any such case but his own, Twemlow goes down again heavily.

"There is nothing new this morning, I suppose?" says Twemlow, returning to the mark with great spirit.

Fledgeby has not heard of any thing.

"No, there's not a word of news," says Lammle.

"Not a particle," adds Boots.

66 'Not an atom," chimes in Brewer. Somehow the execution of this little concerted piece appears to raise the general spirits as with a sense of duty done, and sets the company agoing. Every body seems more equal than before to the calamity of being in the society of every body else. Even Eugene standing in a window, moodily swinging the tassel of a blind, gives it a smarter jerk now, as if he found himself in better case.

Breakfast announced. Every thing on table showy and gaudy, but with a self-assertingly temporary and nomadic air on the decorations, as boasting that they will be much more showy and gaudy in the palatial residence. Mr. Lammle's own particular servant behind his chair; the Analytical behind Veneering's chair; instances in point that such servants fall into two classes: one mistrusting the master's acquaintances, and the other mistrusting the master. Mr. Lammle's servant, of the second class. Appearing to be lost in wonder and low spirits because the police are so long in coming to take his master up on some charge of the first magnitude.

Veneering, M.P., on the right of Mrs. Lammle; Twemlow on her left; Mrs. Veneering, W.M.P. (wife of Member of Parliament), and Lady Tippins on Mr. Lammle's right and left. But be sure that well within the fascination of Mr. Lammle's eye and smile sits little Georgiana. And be sure that close to little Georgiana, also under inspection by the same gingerous gentleman, sits Fledgeby.

Oftener than twice or thrice while breakfast is in progress Mr. Twemlow gives a little sudden turn toward Mrs. Lammle, and then says to her, "I beg your pardon!" This not being Twemlow's usual way, why is it his way to-day? Why, the truth is, Twemlow repeatedly labors under the impression that Mrs. Lammle is going to speak to him, and turning finds that it is not

elicit sparks from Mortimer Lightwood. It is always understood among the initiated, that that faithless lover must be planted at table opposite to Lady Tippins, who will then strike conversational fire out of him. In a pause of mastication and deglutition, Lady Tippins, contemplating Mortimer, recalls that it was at our dear Veneerings, and in the presence of a party who are surely all here, that he told them his story of the man from somewhere, which afterward became so horribly interesting and vulgarly popular.

"Yes, Lady Tippins," assents Mortimer; "as they say on the stage, 'Even so!'"

"Then we expect you," retorts the charmer, "to sustain your reputation, and tell us something else."

"Lady Tippins, I exhausted myself for life that day, and there is nothing more to be got out of me."

Mortimer parries thus, with a sense upon him that elsewhere it is Eugene and not he who is the jester, and that in these circles where Eugene persists in being speechless, he, Mortimer, is but the double of the friend on whom he has founded himself.

'But," quoth the fascinating Tippins, "I am resolved on getting something more out of you. Traitor! what is this I hear about another disappearance ?"

"As it is you who have heard it," returns Lightwood, "perhaps you'll tell us."

"Monster, away!" retorts Lady Tippins. "Your own Golden Dustman referred me to you."

Mr. Lammle striking in here, proclaims aloud that there is a sequel to the story of the man from somewhere. Silence ensues upon the proclamation.

"I assure you," says Lightwood, glancing round the table, "I have nothing to tell." But Eugene adding in a low voice, "There, tell it, tell it!" he corrects himself with the addition, "Nothing worth mentioning."

Boots and Brewer immediately perceive that it is immensely worth mentioning, and become politely clamorous. Veneering is also visited by a perception to the same effect. But it is understood that his attention is now rather used up, and difficult to hold, that being the tone of the House of Commons.

"Pray don't be at the trouble of composing yourselves to listen," says Mortimer Lightwood, "because I shall have finished long before you have fallen into comfortable attitudes. It's like—"

"It's like," impatiently interrupts Eugene, "the children's narrative: