said Miss Murdstone, again, ‘let there be an end of this.

I go tomorrow.’

‘Jane Murdstone,’ thundered Mr. Murdstone. ‘Will you be silent? How dare you?’

Miss Murdstone made a jail-delivery of her pocket-handkerchief, and held it before her eyes.

‘Clara,’ he continued, looking at my mother, ‘you surprise me! You astound me! Yes, I had a satisfaction in the thought of marrying an inexperienced and artless person, and forming her character, and infusing into it some amount of that firmness and decision of which it stood in need.

But when Jane Murdstone is kind enough to come to my assistance in this endeavour, and to assume, for my sake, a condition something like a housekeeper’s,