bride, and who had been moving round her to take in every point

of her quiet, pretty dress; “and so it was for this, my sweet Lucie,

that I brought you across the Channel, such a baby! Lord bless

me! How little I thought what I was doing! How lightly I valued the

obligation I was conferring on my friend Mr. Charles!”

“You didn’t mean it,” remarked the matter-of-fact Miss Pross,

“and therefore how could you know it? Nonsense!”

“Really? Well; but don’t cry,” said the gentle Mr. Lorry.

“I am not crying,” said Miss Pross; “you are.”

“I, my Pross?” (By this time, Mr. Lorry dared to be pleasant

with her, on occasion.)

“You were, just now; I saw you do it, and I don’t wonder at it.

Such a present of plate as you have made ’em, is enough to bring

tears into anybody’s eyes. There’s not a fork or a spoon in the

collection,” said Miss Pross, “that I didn’t cry over, last night after

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the box came, till I couldn’t see it.”

“I am highly gratified,” said Mr. Lorry, “though, upon my

honour, I had no intention of rendering those trifling articles of

remembrance invisible to any one. Dear me! This is an occasion

that makes a man speculate on all he has lost. Dear, dear, dear! To

think that there might have been a Mrs. Lorry, any time these fifty

years almost!”

“Not at all!” From Miss Pross.

“You think there never might have been a Mrs. Lorry?” asked

the gentleman of that name.

“Pooh!” rejoined Miss Pross; “you were a bachelor in your

cradle.”

“Well!” observed Mr. Lorry, beamingly adjusting his little wig,

“that seems probable, too.”

“And you were cut out for a bachelor,” pursued Miss Pross,

“before you were put in your cradle.”

“Then, I think,” said Mr. Lorry, “that I was very unhandsomely

dealt with, and that I ought to have had a voice in the selection of

my pattern. Enough! Now, my dear Lucie,” drawing his arm

soothingly round her waist, “I hear them moving in the next room,

and Miss Pross and I, as two formal folks of business, are anxious

not to lose the final opportunity of saying something to you that

you wish to hear. You leave your good father, my dear, in hands as

earnest and as loving as your own; he shall be taken every

conceivable care of; during the next fortnight, while you are in

Warwickshire and thereabouts, even Tellson’s shall go to the wall

(comparatively speaking) before him. And when, at the fortnight’s

end, he comes to join you and your beloved husband, on your

other fortnight’s trip in Wales, you shall say that we have sent him

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to you in the best health and in the happiest frame. Now, I hear

Somebody’s step coming to the door. Let me kiss my dear girl with

an old-fashioned bachelor blessing, before Somebody comes to

claim his own.”